Discretionary Housing Payments in Scotland: 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023

This publication provides information on Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) in Scotland over the twelve-month period from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

The Scottish Government’s total published budget for DHPs in 2022-23 was £79.0 million. This includes two funding streams for DHPs: “Bedroom Tax Mitigation” (£68.1 million) and “Other DHPs” (£10.9 million). The Bedroom Tax is also known as the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (RSRS).

The distribution of funding has been agreed by local authority leaders (as represented by CoSLA) and the Scottish Government (Table 1 and figure below) as follows:

· to date £70.0 million of funding has been provided.

· tranche 1 funding included “Other DHPs” funding for 2022/23 (£10.9 million) and 80% of the estimated cost of “Bedroom Tax Mitigation” (£54.5 million).

· an additional £2.6 million has been made available from the Emergency Budget Review of November 2022, 80% of which (£2.1 million) has been provided to mitigate the benefit cap as fully as possible.

· an additional £2.5 million to assist with cost of living pressures has been paid direct in to local authorities’ “Other DHP” funds to use at their discretion.

· the remaining 20% of the estimated cost of “Bedroom Tax Mitigation” (£13.6 million), and the remaining 20% of the estimated cost of the ‘Benefit Cap Mitigation’, (£520,000) has been held back to reimburse local authorities for spending over and above Tranche 1.

For more information about the funding methodology, see the Background Note.

Full details – www.gov.scot/publications/discretionary-housing-payments-in-scotland-1-april-2022-to-31-march-2023/pages/funding-for-2022-23/