Discretionary Housing Payments in Scotland: 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023

Management information: expenditure by funding stream

Management information expenditure figures are for the actual spend on DHP awards for the 12 months from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

Chart 2 shows the proportion of DHP actual spend by award purpose. The majority was spent mitigating the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (£66.9 million, 84.1%), with a smaller proportion used to support claimants affected by the benefit cap (£2.5 million, 3.1%) and the ongoing freeze in Local Housing Allowance (£3.5 million, 4.4%). A further £6.3 million (8.0%) was spent on Core (non-welfare reform) awards and around £260,000 (0.3%) on awards that covered a combination of purposes.

Chart 2: Management Information - Proportion of DHP actual spend by funding stream

Table 5 and Chart 3 show the total actual spend as a proportion of the estimated funding allocated for each funding stream.

Local authorities are free to spend their “Other” DHP funding at their discretion on any of the permitted purposes of DHPs, because they are best placed to respond to local housing needs. Allocations of “other” DHP funding is notional. Local authorities spent a much smaller proportion of their funding on the Benefit Cap than the allocated funding for this purpose (£2.5 million, 29%), although after the commitment was made to fully mitigate the benefit cap from 1 January 2023, there was a 35% increase in spending for this purpose compared to the average monthly spend over the first three quarters of the year (Table 6). Local authorities spent more than the estimated allowance for Local Housing Allowance (103%, £3.5 million), and also (162%, £6.3 million) for Core funding. This is a much lower proportion of Core funding than in previous years, as reallocation of funding provided a larger available budget for this stream.

Chart 3: Management Information - Proportion of estimated 2022-23 DHP funding spent (actual) by funding stream