Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the current threshold for pension credit.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The rates of Pension Credit are reviewed annually as part of the Secretary of State’s statutory review of State pension and benefit rates. The review for 2025/26 has been completed and its conclusions announced to Parliament. Subject to Parliamentary approval, the Standard Minimum Guarantee in Pension Credit will increase from £218.15 to £227.10 a week for a single pensioner and from £332.95 to £346.60 a week for a pensioner couple. The new rates will take effect from 7 April 2025.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many additional applications for pension credit have been accepted in (a) England, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland, (d) North West of England and (e) Runcorn and Helsby constituency in the last four months.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The department published information on 27th September on the number of applications between 1 April 2024 and 22 September 2024. This showed a 152% increase in applications in the 8 weeks following the 29 July 2024 Winter Fuel Payment announcement by the chancellor.
The Department has announced its plan to publish updated information on Pension Credit Applications and Awards on 28 November 2024. We are currently unable to provide information at the geographic levels requested and the 28 November 2024 statistical release is currently planned to include data at the national level.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will take steps to ask the Health and Safety Executive to issue guidance on the potential impact of low-level letter boxes on back injuries among postal workers.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) does not currently intend to produce guidance for postal workers on preventing the potential impact of back injuries from low-level letter boxes. HSE already publishes a range of guidance to help employers understand how to assess and prevent the risks of musculoskeletal injuries to their workers.
The Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has carried out ergonomic research which includes a study on reaching letter boxes. The Building Safety Regulator is providing advice to the MHCLG on this research, including what changes may be necessary to the Building Regulations and its associated guidance. The research will be published in due course.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of taper rates for (a) housing benefit and (b) Universal Credit housing elements on people in temporary accommodation.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
The taper rates in Universal Credit (UC) and Housing Benefit (HB) are different and the Department acknowledges the challenge that this creates for those moving into work whilst living in Temporary Accommodation - when transitioning between receiving UC and HB to receiving HB only as their earnings increase.
Officials continue to develop policy and delivery options to improve the customer experience for those reliant on Housing Benefit. Any options involving further investment to strengthen work incentives would require fiscal approval in the normal way.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the average time taken for PIP reviews to be undertaken in each of the last (a) three, (b) six and (c) 12 months.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
Average times between the registration date of a PIP review and the review clearance date is provided in the following table, as requested for the three specified time periods.
Time period | Average time to complete PIP Reviews (weeks) |
Three months to January 2024 | 39 |
Six months to January 2024 | 40 |
Twelve months to January 2024 | 42 |
Notes:
- Source: PIP Atomic Data Store;
- Latest published data is for January 2024, setting the end of each time period;
- Figures are rounded to the nearest week (7 days);
- Figures are for England and Wales only;
- These figures relate to both planned award reviews and changes of circumstances.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much his Department spent on exempt accommodation in each of the last three years.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
Providing the requested information would incur disproportionate costs to the Department due to the resource required to resolve data quality issues on exempt accommodation, which is a particular type of supported housing.
Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is working to resolve a historical data quality issue in relation to how supported housing status is captured on Housing Benefit claims. The resulting fix will be for new claims and will not address historic claims.
In 2022, DWP made investments to deliver improvements to local authority (LA) IT systems, to accurately record all new Housing Benefit claims. This has substantially improved data quality for new claims. DWP have also taken action to improve data on existing claims. LAs have received funding to review their Housing Benefit caseload and set the supported housing status accurately by 31st March 2024.
The Departments’ analysts will then make a final assessment of these case reviews in Summer 2024, once they have received the full relevant data set, and will determine whether it is sufficiently robust to support quantification of the scale and cost of specified accommodation.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the accessibility to local playgrounds for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
The department published the Disability Action Plan on 5 February 2024 which includes measures looking at the accessibility of playgrounds.
A large amount of guidance about how to improve playground accessibility is already available, but practitioners are not always able to locate this advice. The Disability Unit will create an online hub of information for local authorities on creating accessible playgrounds with a new families disabled people’s experience panel helping to support the hub’s development.
This is a national-level approach that should support improvements across many local authorities. We will continue to monitor this area, as well as working with partners to explore the potential for new or updated guidance.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of increasing discretionary housing payments to help reduce homelessness.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
Current rental data and the broader fiscal context were considerations in the Secretary of State’s review of Local Housing Allowance rates last Autumn.
As announced in the Autumn Statement (AS) from April 2024 the Government is investing £7bn over five years to increase Local Housing Allowance rates to the 30th percentile of local market rents in 2024/25. This is in addition to the around £30bn spent annually on housing support. Taken together with the wider benefits uprating, this will improve housing affordability for low-income households on benefits renting in the private sector, helping them afford their rent and reducing the risk of rent arrears and homelessness.
Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs This is not restricted to those who meet the statutory definition of being at risk or homeless, which allows DHPs to be used to stabilise tenancies and thus preventing the need to access to homelessness services.
We’re providing £300m for DHPs between 2022-25. In addition to the central government contribution, English and Welsh local authorities can top up DHP funding up to a maximum of two and a half times this figure using their own funds.
In addition, there has been an investment of over £1bn in DLUHC’s Homelessness Prevention Grant (HPG) over three years, including a £109m top-up this year (2023-24). There has also been funding of £120m to help councils address Ukraine and homelessness pressures in 2024/25, including funding for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Child Maintenance Service is taking to improve collect and pay compliance.
Answered by Paul Maynard
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) continues to take rigorous action to collect maintenance, combining robust negotiation activity with the highly effective use of its extensive range of Enforcement Powers. This approach is driven by the Payment Compliance strategy increasing CMS compliance influencing activities to tackle non-paying cases and challenge non-compliant behaviours. CMS applies a Continuous Improvement focus to Enforcement strategy and processes.
From the latest CMS official statistics, in the quarter ending In the quarter ending September 2023, of 180,000 Paying Parents due to pay via the Collect and Pay service:
Further detail on compliance is provided in the About these statistics section of this release.
As a result of this intense effort The Child Maintenance Service has a relatively low percentage of unpaid maintenance. Only 8% of the total maintenance due to be paid since the start of the CMS remains to be collected through Collect & Pay. This was as high as 17% in March 2015.
CMS does not hesitate to step in and move a case to collect & pay as soon as they are notified payments are not being made. Around 3% of direct pay arrangements move to collect and pay each quarter – a small percentage but this shows that parents can and do move to collect and pay to secure help in getting their child maintenance payments. With the focus of improving customer outcomes, there has been an increase from 64% to 69% of customers who are paying anything towards their maintenance via collect & pay since September 2022.
The published statistics provides data to September 2023 - Section 6. Paying Parents and the Collect and Pay service and National Tables, table 5 Child Maintenance Service statistics: data to September 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
We’ve announced measures to significantly speed up CMS enforcement processes that will reduce the time it takes to secure a liability order from 22 weeks to as low as 6 weeks. A consultation on detailed proposals has recently concluded and the Government response will be published shortly.
Asked by: Mike Amesbury (Independent - Runcorn and Helsby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the level of housing benefit.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
We are forecast to spend £31 billion in 2023/24 on housing support. Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates were boosted by almost £1 billion in 2020, this significant investment has been kept annually to maintain rates at 2020 levels.
The level of LHA rates is reviewed annually by the Secretary of State. LHA rates are not intended to cover all rents in all areas. However, the Department monitors average rents and housing support levels provided to claimants to assess the impact of the policy.
For those who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs and need further support. Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. Since 2011 the Government has provided nearly £1.7 billion in DHP funding to local authorities