To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to his Written Statement
of 10 December 2015, HCWS377, on universal credit and local authorities, what estimate
he has made of (a) the number of people employed by local authorities to administer
housing benefit, (b) the number of such employees likely to be made redundant as a
result of the universal credit roll-out, (c) the total cost to the public purse of
such redundancies, (d) the total number of staff that will be required to administer
universal credit at a local level once the roll-out is complete and (e) the number
of people currently employed by his Department in that capacity.
<p>The Local Authority associations estimate up to 5000 people are, in full or in
part, engaged in delivering housing services and some of this work will continue in
Local Authorities. There are over a million jobs in the Local Authority sector so
with turnover we would expect opportunities for redeployment over the next 3-5 years
as housing benefit for working age people is gradually phased out. We expect the number
of people at risk of redundancy to be very small, but where Local Authorities are
not able to redeploy people, we have said the Government will meet the costs of compulsory
redundancy. Universal Credit will be delivered locally through our existing network
of Jobcentres supported by a number of Service Centres. The number of staff employed
will be determined by the number of people on Universal Credit, itself subject to
the prevailing economic situation at the time. Our current estimate for the combined
workforce in 2021 is 34,000</p>
