Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been urged to raise local housing allowance (LHA) rates at this month’s autumn budget to help low-income private renters avoid facing homelessness .

Local housing allowance rates set the maximum amount of housing benefit that can be paid in each local area. It is supposed to reflect the bottom 30th percentile of market rents, meaning that households in receipt of LHA should be able to afford the lowest third of properties in their area.

But local housing allowance has been frozen for the last 18 months while rents have continued to rise at a higher rate than wages and wider inflation to reach new record-highs.

The result is that people on low incomes find it virtually impossible to find somewhere to rent in the private sector. With a shortage of social ho

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