Discretionary Housing Payments in Scotland: as at 30 September 2022

The total estimated cost of DHP awards in 2022/23 was £79.0 million. An additional £1.2 million was allocated for admin funding taking The Scottish Government’s total published budget for DHPs to £80.2 million.

This includes two funding streams for DHPs: “Bedroom Tax Mitigation” (£68.1 million) and “Other DHPs” (£10.9 million). The Bedroom Tax is also known as the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (RSRS).

The “Other DHPs” funding stream includes funding for core (non welfare reform DHPs, £1.5 million), to support claimants affected by reductions in Local Housing Allowance (£1.3 million) and the introduction of the benefit cap (£8.1 million).

The distribution of funding has been agreed by local authority leaders, repesesented by COSLA, and the Scottish Government (Table 1 and figure below) as follows:

• To date £65.4 million of funding has been provided.
• Tranche 1 funding included “Other DHPs” funding for 2022/23 (£10.9 million) and 80% of the estimated cost of “Bedroom Tax Mitigation” (£54.5 million).
• The remaining 20% (£13.6 million) of the estimated cost of “Bedroom Tax Mitigation” has been held back to reimburse local authorities for spending over and above Tranche 1.

For more information about the funding methodology, see the Background Note.

An “Other DHP” underspend of £2.4 million carried forward from 2021/22 and redistributed to local authorities for 2022/23.

In its Programme for Government, The Scottish Government announced the intention to use the Emergency Budget Review to provide local authorities with DHP funding to mitigate the Benefit Cap as fully as possible, and give local authorities more flexibility to take account of energy bills in their prioritisation of households for DHPs. At the time of release, The Scottish Government had not allocated this additional funding to local authorities.