This report is one of a series of research papers that form the final outputs from the independent evaluation of the recent changes to Local Housing Allowances (LHAs) and Housing Benefit in the private rented sector in Great Britain. The evaluation has been undertaken by a research consortium from the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research at Sheffield Hallam University, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford and Ipsos MORI.


The LHA measures examined in this report were rolled out to existing claimants between April 2011 and December 2012. The dates at which particular claimants were affected by the reforms were linked to their annual claim reassessment dates. Otherwise-identical individuals observed at the same time in the same area could therefore face different LHA systems. The analysis in this report exploits this feature of the roll-out in order to estimate the causal impacts of the reforms on existing claimants, for up to 11 months after being rolled onto the reformed system, using administrative data on Housing Benefit claimants in Great Britain.