Dataset: Housing Benefit claimants
Field: Housing Benefit Weekly Award (£)
Description
Housing Benefit is paid weekly to the claimant or directly to their landlord.
Payment information is sourced from the administering local authority once a decision has been made on amount of Housing Benefit awarded. The decision is based on details entered on the on the Housing Benefit claim form and supporting evidence.
Data refers to the second Thursday of the month.
Classification
Housing Benefit weekly award is applicable to: All claimants
Weekly award amounts (£25 bands)
Up to £25
£25.01 to £50
£50.01 to £75
£75.01 to £100
£100.01 to £125
£125.01 to £150
£150.01 to £200
£200.01 to £225
£225.01 to £250
£250.01 and above
999 Unknown / Missing
Total number of categories:
By weekly award amounts (£25 bands): 11
Quality Statement
In support of the claim, several sources of evidence must be supplied by the claimant and/or partner, including:
-Proof of address, for example, an electricity bill
-Proof of private rent and tenancy, for example, a tenancy agreement
It is possible that errors can occur in the recording of weekly award (both on a form and inputting onto a computer system within the local authority that is processing the claim).
In particular, it is possible that, for some claimant records, the monthly award may be recorded instead of the weekly award. Therefore, care should be taken when looking at high weekly award bands broken down by local authority or parliamentary constituency.
Any claimant records with weekly award recorded higher than the Central London maximum Local Hosing Allowance (LHA) rate have the weekly award set as missing.
A minimum of 50p weekly award (where weekly award is recorded) must be present for a record to be included in these Housing Benefit caseload statistics.