Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking (a) separately and (b) with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make an estimate of how much (i) housing benefit and (ii) housing element of Universal Credit is paid towards service charges of social housing tenants.

The Department does not hold the data requested.

(i) It is not possible to identify Housing expenditure specifically related to eligible service charges for social housing tenants in our administrative data. We only hold data on the total Housing Benefit awards and expenditure.

(ii) For Universal Credit, it is not possible to split UC housing expenditure into expenditure on eligible service charges specifically.