Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he has taken to ensure that the shared accommodation rate is representative of the real cost of renting shared accommodation.

On behalf of DWP, the Rent Officer Services, collect evidence of a wide range of achieved rents for each area and use these to set Local Housing Allowance rates, in line with the current policy for Local Housing Allowance uprating.

Currently, increases to Local Housing Allowance rates are limited to one per cent. However, in areas where there have been the greatest divergences between rates and rents, we are increasing rates by up to 4 per cent through Targeted Affordability Funding.

In 2014/15, this meant that 56 out of the 192 Shared Accommodation Rates were increased by 4 per cent. In 2015/16, there will be £95 million available for the Targeted Affordability funding and we will be increasing 63 out of the 192 Shared Accommodation Rates by 4 per cent.