Cash to help South Lanarkshire residents who are struggling to meet housing costs

This comes after the council carried forward a pot of funding into the current financial year.

More than £80,000 is to be used to help South Lanarkshire residents who are struggling to meet their housing costs.

This comes after the council carried forward a pot of funding into the current financial year.

The £81,000 in discretionary housing payment funding was received later than expected in 2025/26 and has now been transferred to reserves to be spent in 2026/27, ensuring the money reaches those who need it most.

Discretionary housing payments are additional payouts made by councils to people who receive Housing Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit but are still left with a shortfall in their rent.

They act as a financial lifeline for some of the most vulnerable households — including those affected by the bedroom tax, families fleeing domestic abuse, and people at risk of losing their home due to temporary financial crisis.

The transfer was confirmed at South Lanarkshire Council’s recent finance and corporate resources committee, where the council’s head of finance Lorraine O’Hagan presented the year-end revenue budget monitoring report for 2025/26.

She told the committee: “We had two year-end transfers that were approved in relation to discretionary housing payment funding which we can carry forward and spend in the current financial year, and also place-based funding for committed projects, again which will carry forward and be spent in 2026/27.”

The discretionary housing payment transfer formed part of a broader £578,000 underspend recorded by the finance and corporate resources department at the end of 2025/26.

O’Hagan confirmed the overall position was exactly as forecast, saying: “This is in line with our probable outturn position where we had an underspend of £578,000 and this was reported as part of the final position approved by executive committee last week.”

The report and proposed budget transfers were approved by councillors.

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