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 number of housing benefit applicants that have benefitted from the three per cent increase in local housing allowance rates in areas where it has been increased through the Targeted Affordability Funding concession.

There were no Targeted Affordability Funding increases to Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates in 2016/17 because the four year LHA freeze policy was not estimated to have any savings in 2016/17.

In 2017/18 we estimate that 70 thousand households receiving housing benefit or universal credit will benefit from a three per cent Targeted Affordability Funding increase to their LHA rate.