Evictions and Out-of-Area Rehousing of Council Tenants affected by Welfare Reform

The request was partially successful.

Dear East Ayrshire Council,

I am seeking information about the potential impact of central government welfare reform policies on eviction rates and geographical displacement of households with council housing tenancies. My information request relates to three welfare reform policies:

- Under-Occupancy (also known as Removal of Spare Room Subsidy / Bedroom Tax)

- The Benefit Cap

- Universal Credit roll-out

I understand that under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 there is a duty to assist and advise the requester. I would appreciate your advice if you think my request needs any clarification in order to get the information that I am looking for, or if it would exceed the cost limit in its present form.

1. Please provide an annual breakdown since April 2010 of the total number of unique council tenancies - including the total number of people recorded as living in them - that have been evicted due to the non-payment of rent arrears.

2. For each year of this annual breakdown since April 2013, please disclose how many of these evicted households - including the total number of people recorded as living in them - had at some point been affected by:

a. Under-occupancy

b. Under-occupancy and the Benefit Cap

c. Under-occupancy and the Benefit Cap and Universal Credit roll-out

3. How many of the evicted households affected by a, b, or c - including the total number of people recorded as living in them - went on to make a successful homelessness application to the local authority?

4. Of these successful homeless applications, please disclose how many households - including the total number of people recorded as living in them - were placed in temporary accommodation in a different local authority area and disclose the destination local authority area in each case.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Dodson

Freedom Of Information, East Ayrshire Council

Thank you for contacting East Ayrshire Council.  This is an automated
response to advise you that your email has been received and is now being
dealt with.

 

If you are making a Freedom of Information request, you will receive a
response within 20 working days.

 

If your enquiry concerns any other matter, your email will be passed to
the relevant section for appropriate action to be taken.

Regards,

FOI Team.

************************************************************************************

If you are visiting our offices and in an emergency situation will require
help to
evacuate the building please advise us of this so that a Personal
Emergency Evacuation
Plan (PEEP) can be completed

************************************************************************************

East Ayrshire Council’s service commitment states that all

correspondence will be answered within seven working days of receipt.

Customers will be informed should the Council require additional time to

resolve their query. Please note that different legal standards apply to

Social Work.

show quoted sections

Phelps, Donna, East Ayrshire Council

1 Attachment

CLASSIFICATION: PUBLIC

Dear Andrew,

Request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002

I refer to your correspondence dated 26th January 2018 requesting information in relation to evictions and out of area rehousing of Council Tenants affected by Welfare Reform.

The Council is treating your request as a request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and can respond as follows:

Part 1 of your request -rent related evictions:

2010/11 165
2011/12 146
2012/13 93
2013/14 58
2014/15 82
2015/16 92
2016/17 92

In relation to the remainder of your request, under section 12 of FOISA, a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed such amount as may be prescribed by Regulations made by the Scottish Ministers, this amount currently being £600. In order to provide you with this information, a manual trawl through hundreds of council records would be required to extract this information. This would require the involvement of both the Housing and Benefits Section and would involve approximately 50 hours work. As such, I hereby give you notice that we are unable to provide this information.

However, I can provide you with the following information which may be of some interest to you:

As a matter of Policy, East Ayrshire Council do not evict on the grounds of under occupation arrears.
Under occupancy has been fully mitigated by discretionary housing payments since April 2014.

In relation to Part 4 of your request - the answer is zero - we have not housed a household from the area with another authority.

I trust this information has been of assistance to you and I have attached a leaflet to confirm your rights.

Kind regards

Donna Phelps
Freedom of Information Team
East Ayrshire Council
Council Headquarters
London Road
Kilmarnock
KA3 7BU

show quoted sections