§ Mr. CoxTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security how many people living in the London Borough of Wandsworth are in receipt of income support. [101045]
§ Mr. BayleyThe administration of benefits is a matter for Peter Mathison, the Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency. He will write to my hon. Friend.
Letter from Peter Mathison to Mr. Tom Cox, dated 6 December 1999:
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the number of people living on the London Borough of Wandsworth on Income Support (IS).The information is not available in the format requested as the Benefits Agency does not collate information by local authority boundary. However, a figure can be obtained by identifying the postcode of customers living in the area.The number of IS claims from within the London Borough of Wandsworth is approximately 18,500. This represents the number of IS claims, not the total number of beneficiaries of those claims. It is rounded to the nearest hundred cases, and is subject to a degree of sampling error. The sample size was 5% of the IS live load, taken from the IS Statistics Quarterly Enquiries, August 1999.I hope this is helpful.