Written question asked by Chris Ruane (Labour) on Thursday, 5 May 2011, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 9 May 2011. It was answered by Steve Webb (Liberal Democrat) on Monday, 16 May 2011 on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Housing Benefit

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many people in Denbighshire were in receipt of housing benefit in each of the last five years.

Answer

The number of people in Denbighshire local authority who were in receipt of housing benefit in each of the last five years is as follows:.

Table 1: Housing benefit recipients in Denbighshire local authority (LA) as at February 2007
	Caseload
February 2007	6,000
Notes:
1. The data refer to benefit units, which may be a single person or a couple.
2. The figures have been rounded to the nearest 10.
3. Quarterly aggregate clerical ““stock count”” returns were replaced by monthly electronic ““individual level”” scans from SHBE. The final quarterly return was for August 2007 and the first monthly data from SHBE was November 2008.
4. The February 2007 data have been used in this instance, in order to provide a closer time-series with the later SHBE data.
Source:
Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit Management Information System Quarterly data—100% data taken in February 2007

Table 2: Housing benefit recipients in Denbighshire local authority (LA) as at the dates shown
	Caseload
November 2008	6,520
January 2009	6,610
January 2010	7,270
January 2011	7,640
Notes:
1. The data refer to benefit units, which may be a single person or a couple.
2. The figures have been rounded to the nearest 10.
3. SHBE is a monthly electronic scan of claimant level data direct from local authority computer systems. It replaces quarterly aggregate clerical returns.
4. The data are available monthly from November 2008 and January 2011 is the most recent available.
5. Data from SHBE incorporate the local authority changes from 1 April 2009.
6. These figures are available from the Department's tabulation tool at:
http://statistics.dwp.gov.uk/asd/index.php?paae=tabtool
Source:
Single Housing Benefit Extract (SHBE)

Secondary information