To ask the Deputy Prime Minister what his Department's latest estimate is of the number of people in housing need and accepted as such by their local housing authority in each London borough. [130021]
Local authorities in England report the numbers of households on their waiting lists (excluding tenants awaiting a transfer) as at 1 April on their Annual Housing Investment Programme returns. Their activities under the homelessness provisions of the Housing Act 1996 (as amended by the Homelessness Act 2002) are reported on their quarterly PIE housing returns to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The latest available information reported by London boroughs is in the table.
| London boroughs | Households on the Housing Register 1 April 2002 | Statutorily homeless households—number accepted as eligible, un intent tonally homeless and in priority need April to June 2003 |
| Barking and Dagenham | 2,668 | 155 |
| Barnet | 7,030 | 301 |
| Bexley | 3,487 | 104 |
| Brent | 14,746 | 304 |
| Bromley | 3,592 | 236 |
| Camden | 8,147 | 331 |
| City of London | 623 | 10 |
| Croydon | 6,890 | 261 |
| Ealing | 8,289 | 348 |
| Enfield | 7,264 | 318 |
| Greenwich | >6,876 | 1— |
| Hackney | 8,930 | 1— |
| Hammersmith and Fulham | 6,044 | 1— |
| Haringey | 12,585 | 1— |
| Harrow | 3,992 | 85 |
| Havering | 1,888 | 1— |
| Hillingdon | 6,041 | 216 |
| Hounslow | 6,369 | 179 |
| Islington | 8.161 | 1— |
| Kensington and Chelsea | 8,294 | 127 |
| Kingston upon Thames | 3,971 | 95 |
| Lambeth | 14,228 | 364 |
| Lewisham | 15,368 | 368 |
| Merton | 4,361 | 54 |
| Newham | 13,942 | 417 |
| Redbridge | 5,671 | 203 |
| Richmond upon Thames | 3,763 | 92 |
| Southwark | 6,164 | 425 |
| Sutton. | 1,653 | 81 |
| Tower Hamlets | 7,837 | 438 |
| Waltham Forest | 10,283 | 300 |
| Wandsworth | 3,923 | 241 |
| Westminster | 3,709 | 316 |
| 1 Data not reported. | ||
Notes:
As local authorities have different practices for compiling and managing housing registers/waiting lists, direct comparisons between authorities can be misleading.
Sources:
ODPM: Housing Investment Programme (HIP) annual returns
ODPM: P1E housing activity quarterly returns
To ask the Deputy Prime Minister pursuant to his answer of 15 September 2003, ref 129308, when he expects to allocate funds to Colchester's Arms Length Management Organisation; and how much will be allocated. [131011]
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will confirm the funding for Colchester's Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) once the Housing Inspectorate notifies us that it has awarded the ALMO at least a 2* (good) rating. The inspection is currently planned to begin in February 2004. The conditional allocation for 2003–05 is £13.44 million.
To ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he will list the local authorities which are six months or more behind paying Housing Benefit; and how many local authorities who are six months or more behind payment use Capita and their software package Academy. [129172]
I have been asked to reply.We collect average processing times, by local authority, for Housing Benefit claims. The data provided by local authorities for the year ended 31 March 2003, and published on the our Housing Benefit website, www.dwp.gov.uk/housing benefit, show that on average no local authority took longer than six months to process new claims.Average processing times for local authorities whose Housing Benefit administration is contracted out to Capita and who use Academy software, range from 26 days to 131 days. Actual clearance times for individual cases within the average are not collected centrally.