Dataset: Housing Benefit claimants

Field: Number of Spare Rooms Reduced (Level of under occupation of those affected by the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy)

Description

Number of spare rooms reduced denotes how many bedrooms the claimant is under occupying by. It is derived from source data collected on the number of bedrooms in a property and the number of bedrooms entitled to based on the social sector size criteria.

This applies to working age claimants in the Social Rented Sector who are not subject to an exemption and who are assessed as having too many bedrooms according to their need as set out by the size criteria. Working age is defined as those who are below the state pension age.

Classification

Number of spare rooms reduced is applicable to: All claimants

- 1 (one bedroom)

- 2+ (two or more bedrooms)

- Reduction applied but bedroom information is unknown

- No reduction applied

- Not applicable prior to May 2013

Total number of categories: 5

Quality Statement

Since April 2013, the number of bedrooms and the number of bedrooms entitled to have been recorded in the Single Housing Benefit Extract (SHBE) for working age Social Rented Sector cases not excluded from the social sector size criteria. These variables were previously only recorded for LHA pathfinder cases, roll out LHA claims and temporary or short term accommodation cases subject to the LHA based subsidy rules. Collation of data returns from Local Authorities on the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy via the Single Housing Benefit Extract (SHBE) began in April 2013. However the earliest information available through Stat-Xplore is the May 2013 SHBE data return, due to data quality issues with the April 2013 data return.