Discretionary Housing Payments in Scotland: 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026

Official statistics show that, as of 31 March 2026, local authorities had spent 93% (£93.2 million) of the £100.1 million estimated total funding required for DHPs at the beginning of the year when allocations were made for 2025-26, plus the £3 million HEAP funding (Table 4). At the same point last year, we estimated that local authorities had spent 99% of their £90.5 million funding for 2024-25.

A proportion of the Housing Emergency Action Plan funding has been carried over to 2026-27. Excluding this additional funding from the calculation would put overall expenditure at 96% on a comparable basis to last year.

There is considerable variation across the local authorities in the percentage of initial funding allocation which was spent between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026 (Chart 5 and Table 4).

Twenty-five local authorities spent more than their first tranche of funding and their HEAP allocation, with the excess spend ranging from around £15,000 to around £2.0 million at local authority level. Cumulatively, these local authorities spent £11.5 million more than their initial allocations.

Twenty-six local authorities collectively spent around £8.0 million less than their total estimated funding. Annual underspends varied from £33,000 to around £1.6 million at local authority level (Table 4). Where this funding was part of the second portion of HEAP funding (£2 million), any underspend is carried forward to 2026-27.

Chart 5: Proportion of estimated 2025-26 DHP funding spent as at 31 March 2026