Social Fund Allocations

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. James Plaskitt)
I am pleased to announce that the gross discretionary Social Fund budget for 2007-08 will be £752 million.



This includes a £50 million injection of net funding, being the second of three which in total comprise a substantial £210 million boost to support changes to the loans scheme.

With the net funding available, I have been able to allocate a gross national loans budget of £610 million and a national community care grants budget of £141 million from 1st April 2007; £l million will be retained centrally as a contingency reserve. For example it is available to provide additional help to Jobcentre Plus budgets facing unexpected and unplanned expenditure.

Details of individual budget allocations will be placed in the Library.



The discretionary social fund budget is cash limited. Budgets are allocated to districts on 1 April each year. The gross discretionary social fund budget allocated for 2007-08 is £752 million made up of:

New money (net AME) £228.2million

Forecast loan recovery £523.8million

This was allocated as follows:

Loans £610 million

Grants £141 million

Contingency reserve £1 million