The impact of the direct payment of housing benefit: evidence from Great Britain

Paul Hickman, Peter A. Kemp, Kesia Reeve and Ian Wilson

Housing Studies, 2017, vol. 32, issue 8, 1105-1126

Abstract: In recent years, a number of welfare reforms have been introduced in the UK by Conservative-led governments. The most high profile of these is Universal Credit (UC), which is currently being rolled out across the country. A key feature of UC is a change in the way the income-related housing allowance for social housing tenants (Housing Benefit) is administered, as under UC, it is paid directly to tenants (direct payment), who are responsible for paying their rent. This represents a step change for them as for more than 30 years landlord payment has been the norm in the UK. There has been little research into direct payment. This paper seeks to address this gap in knowledge by presenting the key findings of an initiative designed to trial direct payment. It finds that many tenants experienced difficulties on direct payment. Reflecting this, landlords' arrears rose markedly.

Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02673037.2017.1301401 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:chosxx:v:32:y:2017:i:8:p:1105-1126

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/chos20

DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2017.1301401

Access Statistics for this article

Housing Studies is currently edited by Chris Leishman, Moira Munro, Ray Forrest, Alex Schwartz, Hal Pawson and John Flint

More articles in Housing Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().