Discretionary Housing Payments in Scotland: 1 April 2023 to 30 September 2023

Management information expenditure figures are for the actual spend on DHP awards for the 12 months from 1 April 2023 to 30 September 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 (£34.2 million, 85.3%), with a smaller proportion used to support claimants affected by the introduction of the benefit cap (£1.6 million, 4.0%) and reductions in Local Housing Allowance (£1.5 million, 3.7%). A further £2.7 million (6.8%) was spent on Core (non-welfare reform) awards and around £65,000 (0.2%) 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 spent a much smaller proportion of their funding on the Benefit Cap than the allocated funding for this purpose (£1.6 m, 26%), although after the commitment was made to fully mitigate the benefit cap from 1 January 2023, there has been a 58% increase in spending compared to the same period in 2022.

Chart 3: Management Information - Proportion of estimated 2023-24 DHP funding spent (actual) by funding stream

Chart 4 shows the expenditure profile of each local authority. Whilst the Scottish Government provides funding for “LHA” and “Core” purposes, this is a notional split and local authorities have discretion around how they use their funding.

Chart 4: Management Information - DHP actual funding spent by each local authority broken down by funding stream