Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the difference between a local authority being able to recover (1) its expenses, and (2) its reasonable costs, in matters relating to its duties around housing legislation.

Local housing authorities incur a range of costs when carrying out their statutory homelessness duties. They have powers to require households to pay reasonable costs towards both the accommodation that it secures for them and property storage costs, however they cannot require households to pay actual costs where these are more than those determined to be reasonable. Authorities determine what constitutes a reasonable cost by taking account of a household’s personal circumstances, its finances and the nature of the accommodation.