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— belo~s
esceptiona] hardship payuileuits was generally low uiianv Housing Benefit
managers considered their allocation to be ‘aboLit right’ haecaiise it ~sould
allow theuii to cope with expected increases in demand in the future
Local authoriry benefit departinenits do not collect data omi the number of
restricted rent awards they make, but it is possible to get a sense from the
quarterly returuis that local authorities submit to DSS containing data on
the number of Rent Othcer restrictions iii force in the relevant qLimuter
For the purposes of this research DSS supplied statistics omi the number
of Rent Officer restrictions in Ibrce in each local authority for the first
three quitters of 1997/98 (QI to Q3) This allows us to get a sense of
the order of magnitude of potential demiiand for exceptional hardship
payinemits For each authority, the number of Rent Officer restnctionis mi
force iii ~ , Q2, and Q3 was k no~cii By taking the maximum value we
have aim indicator of potential denianid in a particular quarter This cannot
be trauislited unto the potential demand over the whole year because
there are flows into and out 0 f the register of restricted rents Many
claiin.iiits will appean in the statistics for all four quarters of the year
Furthermore, claimants do uior have to apply for a payinemit whemi their
claim is detenuimmied They iii my ‘s ish to apply at soiiie point during the
benefit period when they timid they are iii hardship What we caul say
however us that the potential demand for exceptional hardship payimients
wuld not be lc~sthan the imiaxiniunu figure f~ rent restrictions iii the year
The distrubLution of these uiia\uilitmnii figures is presenited iii Table 3 5
Table 3 5 Maxitrium quarterly rent restrictions as indicators
of potential demand for exceptional hardship payments
Maximum quarterly Number of local
number of rent restrictions authorities
0-500 95 31
501-1000 83 27
1001-1500 39 13
1501-2000 31 10
Over 2000 56 18
Total 304
The purpose of this table is to make a simple point Table 3 5 suggests
that the potential deniamid for es.ceptronal hardship paynients is very nitich
higher than current application rates the data for which were presented
earlier in Table 3 1 That table showed that only 20 per cent of local
authorities received illore than ten applicatiomis a month, whereas Table
3 5 suggests that most authorities wmmld receive applications iii the order of
hundreds amid sonietinimes thousands
ii