Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much has been spent on Local Welfare Assistance Schemes in each of the last nine years.

Local authorities report how much they have spent on local welfare assistance schemes in their annual Revenue Outturn returns to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. This can be found in line 465 in the individual local authority data outturn table ‘RO6’ for each year up to the latest for 2017-18 at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/local-authority-revenue-expenditure-and-financing