1.
a) Please state the local authority’s expenditure (including use of Government grants) on clearing the arrears of tenants in the following financial years.
i. 2017/2018:
ii. 2018/2019:
iii. 2019/2020:
iv. 2020/2021:
v. 2021/2022:
b) For each of the years, please provide a breakdown of expenditure on clearing the arrears of council housing tenants, housing association tenants and private rental sector tenants.
i. 2017/2018:
ii. 2018/2019:
iii. 2019/2020:
iv. 2020/2021:
v. 2021/2022:

2.
a) Please state the local authority’s expenditure (including use of Government grants) on discretionary housing payments to assist ongoing renting costs of tenants in the following years.
i. 2017/2018:
ii. 2018/2019:
iii. 2019/2020:
iv. 2020/2021:
v. 2021/2022:
b) For each of the years, please provide a breakdown of expenditure on assisting the ongoing renting costs of council housing tenants, housing association tenants and private rental sector tenants.
i. 2017/2018:
ii. 2018/2019:
iii. 2019/2020:
iv. 2020/2021:
v. 2021/2022:

We do not hold this information in a reportable manner. Rent arrears can be cleared using two funds within the Homelessness Budget, the Homelessness Prevention Grant and the rent deposit and rent in advance scheme. We cannot identify from the total’s spend on either of these two funds which payments were for just rent arrears, or which were for rent in advance/deposits etc or some other prevention activity. Therefore In order to establish how many payments were made to clear the arrears of tenants in each of theses years, we would have to look into the paper case file of every single homelessness applicant who has presented to the service since 2017 (and electronic case management system since April 2021) as we do not have a central list of who we made payments too, and then we would have to continue to look through the file to confirm the tenure type.
On average we have about 300 approaches per year, so that is approximately 1500 cases, some of the case files may be in storage so we would also need to factor in time/cost of getting these out of archive and then we would need to go through each file to see if we have made a payment to clear rent arrears. Each file is of varying size but I would say 10 mins average to look through, so in 18 hours we would only be able to look through 108 cases files. I think this could take 250 hours for just questions 1 and 2.
In 18 hours we could do half a year’s worth of cases – potentially could do all of 21/22 as these files are at least electronic.
As this would exceed the appropriate limit, therefore Section 12 exemption is being applied.