The Housing Executive

During 2010/11 we paid out a total of £573.3m in Housing Benefit. £211.9m was paid in respect of public sector claims and £361.4m in respect of private sector claims (this includes payments for housing association tenant claims). This was an increase of 10.7% over the previous year. The number of people receiving Housing Benefit increased by 4.3% during the year to a total of 156,991 (68,121 in Housing Executive tenancies, 22,395 in housing association tenancies and 66,475 in the private rented sector).  

In addition, a further £2.2m was paid to 17,867 Rate Relief claimants and £0.5m was paid to 4,147 Lone Pensioner Allowance claimants.

We continued our efforts to reduce the level of fraudulent claims and during the year 276 cases were referred to the Benefit Investigation Service of the Social Security Agency for investigation.

The level of overpayments increased from £23.4m to stand at £26.9m at the end of the year. During the year overpayments amounting to £18.4m were identified and £13.1m was recovered with a further £1.8m being written off.