Hansard

Housing Benefit: Lone Parents

Volume 498: debated on Tuesday 27 October 2009

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Mr. Stewart Jackson

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what estimate she has made of the number of teenage single parents in receipt of housing benefit. (294885)

Helen Goodman

The latest available information is in the following table:

Teenage lone parents in receipt of housing benefit in Great Britain

Number

May 2004

25,000

Notes: 1. The figures are based on a 1 per cent. sample and are therefore subject to a degree of sampling variation. 2. Lone parents are defined as single people with dependants. 3. 16 to 19-year-olds have been included in the sample. 4. The figures have been rounded to the nearest thousand. 5. Figures for any non-responding authorities have been estimated. 6. Housing benefit figures exclude any extended payment cases. Source: Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit Management Information System, Annual 1 per cent. sample, taken in May 2004.

From February 2007, DWP has been collecting more detailed HB/CTB data electronically from local authorities. Over time this will improve the accuracy, timeliness and level of detail available in the published statistics. Quality assurance has been carried out on much of the new data, and the results are published at:

http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/hbctb.asp

However, as not all of the detail has been quality assured to publication standard, this particular question can only be answered by using data from the previous detailed data source, which is for May 2004.