Treasury cannot provide figures on how many people receiving benefits to help meet housing costs are living in privately owned accommodation.

Jason Moorhouse MHK (Arbory, Castletown and Malew) raised the issue in this week’s Tynwald questions, asking for a specific figure, but Treasury Minister Alfred Cannan was unable to give one.

Support for people on low incomes to help them meet housing costs comes through social security benefits including income support, employed person’s allowance and income-based jobseekers’ allowance.

Mr Cannan said: ’It is not possible to provide the definitive number of people in privately owned accommodation who were receiving housing allowances as a component part of their income-related benefits without a physical examination of thousands of case files.

’Treasury simply does not have the resources available to undertake such an examination at this time.’

But the Minister said the Treasury was trying to enhance IT systems so it will ’have the ability to undertake analyses - and produce timely data - regarding all awards of income-related benefits and their component parts in future’.

In a separate question, Mr Moorhouse asked how much compensation had been paid out to private landlords for repairing damage caused by social security tenants in the past five years.

Tenancy

Mr Cannan said the Treasury had not made any such payments.

He added: ’Through the provision of income-related benefits, the Treasury helps certain people on low incomes to meet their housing costs, which in some cases is rent payable under a tenancy agreement to a landlord.

’The Treasury is not party to such tenancy agreements and therefore cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by such tenants.’