Housing Benefit: Fraud

(asked on 13th December 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the £510 million of funding for tackling benefit fraud will include any potential cases involving housing benefit fraud by providers of supported exempt accommodation.


Answered by
David Rutley Portrait
David Rutley
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
This question was answered on 20th December 2021

The additional £510m announced on 13th December 2021 is new funding that will enable us to drive down the level of fraud in Universal Credit and recover more debt.

It will support several different methods of fraud detection and prevention, including a targeted review of Universal Credit claims, the development of a new Debt Enforcement Function and further recruitment into the Counter Fraud and Compliance and Debt directorate, so that we can continue to respond quickly and effectively to threats.

This recruitment, which includes funding for around 2,000 trained specialists, will help tackle fraud across a range of benefits, including any Housing Benefit related fraud.

At Spending Review 2021, the Department also secured an additional £103m for fraud and error activity. This funding is enabling DWP to continue key fraud and error detection and prevention work, and secured the completion of our current transformation programme, thus enhancing our ability to prevent and detect fraud and error.

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