Discretionary Housing Payments in Scotland: 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024

Management information expenditure figures are for the actual spend on DHP awards for the 12 months from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024.

Chart 2 shows the proportion of DHP actual spend by award purpose. The majority was spent mitigating the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (£70.4 million, 83.0%), with a smaller proportion used to support claimants affected by the benefit cap (£3.5 million, 4.1%) and the freeze in Local Housing Allowance which was still ongoing in 2023-24 (£3.7 million, 4.4%). A further £6.6 million (7.8%) was spent on Core (non-welfare reform) awards and around £627,000 (0.7%) 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 £3.5 million (57%) of their allocated funding for Benefit Cap mitigation. This expenditure is mitigating around double the proportion of benefit cap that was mitigated in 2022-23 (29%), and the total expenditure for this purpose increased by 41% from £2.5 million in 2022-23.

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 therefore notional.

Local authorities spent more than their estimated allocations for Local Housing Allowance (101%, £3.7 million), and also for Core funding (157%, £6.6 million).

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 under the different streams, for Local Housing Allowance or Core (or a combination of the two) 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