Spend on mitigating the bedroom tax and collateral damage from the two child policy: FOI release

Information requested

How much has the Scottish Parliament / Government spent mitigating:

1. The bedroom tax; and

2. Collateral damage from the two child policy attributed to means tested benefits.

Response

Please find our response to part 1 of your request regarding how much the Scottish Government has spent mitigating the bedroom tax below:

Since 2013 (including 2024/25) the Scottish Government has invested over £618 million in discretionary housing payments to mitigate the bedroom tax. The Scottish Government has also provided over £12 million of funding for the administration of the scheme to help meet Local Authority (LAs) costs. An annual breakdown is provided in the table below:

Table 1: Discretionary Housing Payments bedroom tax budget (2013/14 – present)

2013/14 £20.00m	2014/15 £35.00m	2015/16 £35.00m	2016/17 2017/18 £35.00m £47.60m		2018/19 £50.10m
				£1.2m admin	£1.2m admin
2019/20	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	2024/25	Total
£52.30m	£59.70m	£71.00m	£68.10m	£69.70m	£74.84m	£618.34m
£1.2m admin	£1.2m admin	£1.2m admin	£1.7m admin	£2.2m admin	£2.2m admin	£12.10m*
						£630.44m

*Please note: admin funding is paid to LAs on top of their DHP budget to cover the costs associated with administrating the scheme; including bedroom tax mitigation, benefit cap mitigation and other household support.

With regards to the second part of your FOI request on how much the Scottish Government has spent on collateral damage from the two child policy attributed to means tested benefits, we are unable to answer this part of your request.

This is because the Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for as the Scottish Government does not directly mitigate the two-child limit.

As such, I hereby provide you with formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

Discretionary Housing Payments, as outlined in the response to part 1 of your request are one of the main ways in which the Scottish Governmentmitigates the impact of UK Government policy, with the amount invested set out above.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.