Tenants and Advisors Early Experiences of the Local Housing Allowance and Money Management

Following the evaluation of the Local Housing Allowance Pathfinders, Local Housing Allowance (LHA) was rolled out nationally in April 2008. LHA replaces Housing Benefit for tenants in the deregulated private rented sector and is part of the Government's wider strategy for Housing Benefit reform. Key features of the allowance are that entitlement is based upon household size (rather than size of property rented) and in most cases it is paid directly to the tenant, instead of to the landlord. The overall aim of the LHA is to empower tenants by enabling them to exercise more choice and take more responsibility over their housing decisions.

CRSP was commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions to explore (qualitatively) tenants’ and advisors’ early experiences of the LHA national roll out, with a particular focus on issues arising from the direct payment of LHA to tenants and how tenants manage their LHA money. This research formed part of a wider two year review to monitor the impact of LHA at a national level and sought to assess whether any new issues were arising under the LHA national rollout model that were not apparent in the LHA Pathfinder evaluation.

The research was conducted in five local authorities and had two main elements. In each authority area two focus groups were convened, one with staff and advisors from the local authority, the other with advisors from independent advice agencies to explore their experiences of LHA and its impact on tenants. In-depth interviews were also conducted with tenants which focussed on their experiences of LHA in relation to money management and housing choice.

Overall, the findings from this research were very similar to those of the Pathfinder evaluation. The full findings from the research were published by DWP in October 2010.

Sponsor: Department for Work and Pensions

Project team: Yvette Hartfree, Grahame Whitfield, Amanda Waring, Nicola Selby

Start date: June 2009

Completion date: June 2010

Publication: Hartfree, Y., Whitfield, G., Waring, A., Sandu, A. and Hill, K. (2010) Tenants’ and advisers’ early experiences of the Local Housing Allowance national rollout.  Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Research Report No. 688. Norwich: HMSO.

Submission to the Work and Pensions Committee:
Inquiry into the Impact of the changes to Housing Benefit announced in the June 2010 Budget

Related project: Evaluation of the Local Housing Allowance

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