Awarding Discretionary Housing Payments: Constraints of time, conditionality and the assessment of income/expenditure

Jed Graham Meers

Awarding Discretionary Housing Payments: Constraints of time, conditionality and the assessment of income/expenditure

Law

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

As the Discretionary Housing Payment scheme (DHPs) continues to shoulder the considerable burden of mitigating reductions to housing benefit, this paper focuses on how the local authorities tasked with their allocation award these payments. Drawing on a small-scale vignette study with eighteen local authorities and excerpts from an analysis of 242 DHP application forms, it outlines three key problems: the time-limited nature of awards, deficiencies in the assessment of applicant income/expenditure, and the attachment of conduct conditionality to the renewal of awards. These problems in the administration of DHPs add further weight to arguments that this layer of discretionary support is deficient in adequately mitigating shortfalls in housing benefit.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	102-119
Journal	Journal of Social Security Law
Volume	25
Issue number	2
Publication status	Published - 2018

Bibliographical note

© 2018 Sweet & Maxwell and its Contributors. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details

Keywords

discretionary housing payments, discretion, local authority, local government law

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Awarding Discretionary Housing Payments
© 2018 Sweet & Maxwell and its Contributors. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details
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Cite this

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AB - As the Discretionary Housing Payment scheme (DHPs) continues to shoulder the considerable burden of mitigating reductions to housing benefit, this paper focuses on how the local authorities tasked with their allocation award these payments. Drawing on a small-scale vignette study with eighteen local authorities and excerpts from an analysis of 242 DHP application forms, it outlines three key problems: the time-limited nature of awards, deficiencies in the assessment of applicant income/expenditure, and the attachment of conduct conditionality to the renewal of awards. These problems in the administration of DHPs add further weight to arguments that this layer of discretionary support is deficient in adequately mitigating shortfalls in housing benefit.

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