Repossession Orders: Housing Benefit

Margaret Moran
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many possession orders were (a) suspended and (b) dismissed relating to properties owned by (i) registered social landlords and (ii) local authority housing departments because of non-payment of housing benefit by local authorities in the latest period for which figures are available.

Maria Eagle
I have been asked to reply.

Data are not available relating to the number of possession actions initiated by social landlords or local authority housing departments which were suspended or dismissed on the grounds of non-payment of housing benefit by local authorities. This information could be compiled centrally only at disproportionate cost.

However, the Ministry of Justice publishes general quarterly statistics on mortgage and landlord possession actions. This publication includes court-level data on the number of suspended orders, and is available from the statistics pages of the Ministry of Justice website.