Rent Rebate claimed since 2020 (FOI)

Request  

A

Please advise the total amount of Rent Rebate claimed from Social Security over the past three years. 

B

Please advise whether checks are made whenever an application is made for Rent Rebate to ensure the accommodation is charging the said rent claimed.

C

With regard to the landlord involved, please confirm whether the Income Tax Department is accordingly informed of the situation to ensure that the landlord is paying their dues?

Response

A

Rent Rebate was one of the benefits replaced by Income Support in 2008. Income support entitlement is made up of several components, one of which is an accommodation component.  

The accommodation component provides a capped or uncapped amount and is governed by social housing rental policy for accommodation, based on the size (number of bedrooms) and property type (house, flat, bedsit, lodgings etc.). Not every claim is eligible for an accommodation component, for example if a person is living with friends/family. For more information, please see the link below:

How your Income Support benefit is made up (gov.je) 

Where the accommodation component forms part of an Income Support claim, the calculation of how much will be paid is achieved by considering the household income, after disregards, against the gross value of the components the household is eligible for. 

For these reasons it is not possible to provide the amount of the accommodation component ‘claimed’ in the past 3 years. This information is therefore not held, and Article 10 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.

However, as an alternative the estimated annual proportioned expenditure on the accommodation components for those years is:

• 2020 £35,202,000.00
• 2021 £33,338,000.00
• 2022 £31,206,000.00 

This is calculated by dividing the actual Income Support benefit received by a household in proportion to the gross value of each of the components that the household is eligible for, to allocate a specific net value to each of the components. 

The number and type of Income Support claims changes over time and the values of some components can also change during the year. Therefore, this calculation includes data taken from each month of the year to ensure that trends in the take-up of Income Support and rate changes during the year are represented and provides approximate net values for the cost of each component group.

The source data used for this calculation is available via the following link:

Income Support Statistics - Income Support Annual Expenditure - Government of Jersey Open Data (gov.je)

In addition, the recent answer of the Minister for Social Security to a States question related to the accommodation cost of income support is available here: 

Written Question 327-2023 (statesassembly.gov.je)

B

Anyone who has applied for income support and is eligible for the accommodation component must provide the department with their tenancy details from their landlord, which includes the size and type of the dwelling and the weekly / monthly rent charged. 

C

Customer & Local Services do not routinely share this data with Revenue Jersey. The information may be requested as part of a compliance check conducted by Revenue Jersey.

Article applied 

Article 10 - Obligation of scheduled public authority to confirm or deny holding Information

(1) Subject to paragraph (2), if –

(a) a person makes a request for information to a scheduled public authority; and

(b) the authority does not hold the information, it must inform the applicant accordingly.

(2) If a person makes a request for information to a scheduled public authority and –

(a) the information is absolutely exempt information or qualified exempt information; or

(b) if the authority does not hold the information, the information would be absolutely exempt

information or qualified exempt information if it had held it, the authority may refuse to inform the applicant whether or not it holds the information if it is satisfied that, in all the circumstances of the case, it is in the public interest to do so.

(3) If a scheduled public authority so refuses –

(a) it shall be taken for the purpose of this Law to have refused to supply the information requested on the ground that it is absolutely exempt information; and

(b) it need not inform the applicant of the specific ground upon which it is refusing the request or, if the authority does not hold the information, the specific ground upon which it would have refused the request had it held the information.