Discretionary Housing Payments in Scotland: 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025
This publication provides information on Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) in Scotland over the period from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
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Management information expenditure figures are for the actual spend on DHP awards for the 12 months from 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.
Chart 2 shows the proportion of DHP actual spend by award purpose. The majority was spent mitigating the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (£74.2 million, 83.1%), with a smaller proportion used to support claimants affected by the benefit cap (£5.0 million, 5.6%) and the Local Housing Allowance (£3.1 million, 3.5%). A further £6.7 million (7.5%) was spent on Core (non-welfare reform) awards and around £304,000 (0.3%) on awards that covered a combination of purposes.
Chart 2: Management Information - Proportion of DHP actual spend by funding stream
Table 5 and Chart 3 show the total actual spend as a proportion of the estimated funding allocated for each funding stream.
The £74.2 million spent by local authorities on Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy represents almost complete mitigation (99%) of this particular policy. In 2023-24, the spend on this item was slightly over budget at 101%.
Local authorities spent £5.0 million (64%) of their allocated funding for Benefit Cap mitigation. This is greater than the 57% of funding that was spent in 2023-24, and the total expenditure for this purpose increased by 42% from £3.7 million in 2023-24.
Local authorities are free to spend their “Other” DHP funding at their discretion on any of the permitted purposes of DHPs, because they are best placed to respond to local housing needs. Allocation of “Other” DHP funding is therefore notional.
Local authorities spent less than their estimated allocations for Local Housing Allowance (84%, £3.1 million), and more for Core funding (158%, £6.7 million).
Chart 3: Management Information - Proportion of estimated 2024-25 DHP funding spent (actual) by funding stream
Chart 4 shows the expenditure profile of each local authority. Whilst the Scottish Government provides funding under the different streams, for Local Housing Allowance or Core (or a combination of the two) this is a notional split and local authorities have discretion around how they use their funding.
Chart 4: Management Information - DHP actual funding spent by each local authority broken down by funding stream