Agenda item - Public Involvement
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Agenda item
Public Involvement
To consider the following matters raised by members of the public:
(a) Petitions: to receive any petitions presented by members of the public to the full Council or as notified for presentation at the meeting by the due date of 31 May, 2018;
(b) Written Questions: to receive any questions submitted by the due date of 12 noon on the 8th June, 2018;
(c) Deputations: to receive any deputations submitted by the due date of 12 noon on the 8th June, 2018.
Minutes:
5 (a) Petitions
5.1 There were none
5 (b) Written Questions
5.2 The following question was submitted by Ms K Garrett-Gotch:
Discretionary Housing Payments
At the last committee meeting (14.3.18) the Chairperson, in response to a question, stated that “Discretionary Housing Payments are funded through government grant which was £1.133m in 2017/18”. The Council is allowed to top up this fund. Could the committee provide details of the annual budget allocated by the Council each year since the fund was introduced and how much of this allocation has been spent. Could figures also be provided as to the maximum allowed from council funds under the DWP formula?
5.3 The person asking the question was not able to attend the meeting, and the Chair read out the following response:
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The Discretionary Housing Payment scheme has been running for many years in different forms, but the figures for the last three years show that the council is spending the full allocation of funds from the DWP. The council can indeed top up this fund from its own budget as long as the overall expenditure, including the DWP element, is not greater than 2.5 times the amount allocated by the DWP. This would theoretically have allowed for a maximum £1.7m extra in 2017/18 on top of the DWP grant of £1.133m. In 2016/17, the DWP fund allocation was £0.776m, so the maximum allowable extra top up was £1.16m. In 2015/16, the DWP fund allocation was £0.611m, so the maximum allowable top up that year was £0.92m. For each of the last three years back to 2015/16, an amount of £75,000 was allocated from the HRA as a contingency fund. In 2015/16 and 2016/17, none of the contingency was used, but in 2017/18, £36,000 HRA money was spent on Discretionary Housing Payments. |
5 (c) Deputations
5.4 There were none
Supporting documents:
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