Dataset: Housing Benefit claimants
Description
Individuals or households also in receipt of one or more of the following passported benefits are automatically entitled to Housing Benefit:
- Income Support
- Job Seekers Allowance (Income Based)
- Guaranteed Pension Credit
- Employment Support Allowance (Income Related)
Passported status is sourced form the benefit claim form where all other benefits the claimant or partner receives must be recorded at the reference date (second Thursday of the month). See the image of question below.
Classification
Passported status is applicable to: All claimants
Passported benefit status:
- Passported
- Non-passported
99 Unknown / Missing
This can then be broken down into passported benefit:
Passported:
- In receipt of IS
- In receipt of Pension Credit (GC)
- In receipt of JSA (IB)
- In receipt of ESA (IB)
Non-passported:
- Standard case (including Savings Credit only)
99 Unknown / Missing
Total number of categories:
By passported status: 3
By passported benefit: 6
Quality Statement
Passported status of claimant (and of partner of main claimant if applicable) on the reference date (second Thursday in the month) is derived from a list of other benefits in payment.
Other benefits in payment are recorded as part of the housing benefit claim process (see Images of Questions above). In support of the claim, proof of identity must be provided, for example, birth certificate.
Proof of other benefits received by the claimant or any other adult in the household must be provided, for example, award notices from the Jobcentre Plus office.
It is possible that errors can occur in the recording of other benefits in payment (both on form and inputting onto computer system within the local authority processing the claim). It is also possible that a change in circumstance, for example, a claimant moving from Income Support to Pension Credit may take some time to be reflected within the Single Housing Benefit Extract (SHBE). Users should be aware of this when using the type of passported benefit breakdown.
In April 2013, Universal Credit was introduced to replace legacy benefits for working age people. Most people who claim UC receive support for housing costs through the UC Housing Element and do not receive Housing Benefit. However, in some limited circumstances claimants can receive UC and HB at the same time. Care should be taken using the Passported Benefit Status as a small number of claims have been incorrectly presented as "Non-passported: Standard case" when in fact they were receiving both HB and UC together.
Up to March 2018, therefore, the number of such claims is expected to be small.
After April 2018, a policy change resulted in a greater number of working age people in specified temporary or supported accommodation types receiving HB and UC together, and we determined the safest approach was to withdraw the Passported Benefit Status variable for the Data from April 2018 until we can resolve underlying quality issues.