01 / The Ledger · Benefits
Benefits by area
Explore published benefit spending across England and Wales. Compare local authorities, financial years and benefits, with the source and coverage beside the figures.
The Ledger / the local record
Where the payments go.
Explore published benefit expenditure by local authority. Choose a financial year, inspect the breakdown and compare places using the same measure.
England and Wales · annual expenditure estimates. These are DWP’s geographic allocations of spending, not a live count of claims or a measure of local taxation. Latest financial year: 2024/25.
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Swipe to scroll the page. Tap an area to see its record. Switch on Moveable map to pan and zoom. The colour scale stays the same across years for the selected measure.
Pounds per resident spreads the selected expenditure across the whole population. It is not an average payment to a claimant or an individual tax bill. A higher figure alone does not establish fraud, unemployment or the cause of a difference.
The spending record
Breakdown and history.
By benefit
Published financial years
Compare the areas
Find a place. Read the figures.
Search the authority names below. Your search filters the table; it does not change the map or the England and Wales comparison.
| Local authority | Total expenditure | Per resident | Population denominator |
|---|---|---|---|
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Sources, coverage and calculation method
What does the spending figure measure?
DWP allocates annual benefit expenditure to areas using administrative caseloads and average awards. These are estimates of where national expenditure went, not a local authority’s own budget. The geographical tables are published as research and analysis. They should not be confused with a current monthly award multiplied by twelve.
DWP estimates local annual expenditure from benefit caseloads and average awards, applied to outturn totals. The Cartulary extracts non-overlapping top-level benefits and converts £ million to pounds. These are allocated expenditure estimates, not audited council accounts or a current annualised-award model.
Values are rounded to the nearest pound for the data file and to a suitable display precision. The source estimates are not accurate to the nearest pound; rounded component sums can differ slightly from the published total.
Which benefits are included?
The combined measure adds the benefit series listed in this explorer. State Pension is a separate selection and is excluded from the combined measure unless you select its checkbox. The remainder is labelled “benefits shown, excluding State Pension”. It is not synonymous with working-age benefits: other included benefits can be paid to people above State Pension age. Benefits absent from the source are not estimated or silently added.
The 15 benefits shown exclude HMRC Tax Credits and Child Benefit, Statutory Maternity Pay and other payments without local allocations. Cost of Living payments are excluded except the pensioner additions included in Winter Fuel Payments. DWP describes these tables as research and analysis, not Official Statistics.
Population and changing boundaries
Pounds per resident is The Cartulary’s calculation using ONS mid-year population estimates for the calendar year in which the financial year begins, on matching April 2023 local-authority geography. For 2024/25 the denominator is mid-2024, not 2025 or 2026. It is a comparison measure, not a resident’s individual tax bill.
2023 local-authority footprint, displayed with ONS December 2024 generalised boundaries. Four 2023 reorganisations are reconciled using complete former districts for the two earlier years. Published source rows for obsolete authorities and county subtotals are not double-counted.
Amounts are nominal pounds, without inflation adjustment. Coverage here begins in 2021/22 with four reconciled years. Eligibility, uprating, housing costs, age structure and movement from legacy benefits to Universal Credit affect changes.
Missing observations and claimant counts
A dash or grey map area means an unavailable observation, not zero. The combined measure is withheld if an included component is missing. A claimant count is a different measure from expenditure. This release does not add overlapping benefit caseloads or infer the share of households receiving benefits.
Original sources and downloads
- DWP benefit expenditure by local authority, 2002/03–2024/25 ↗
- DWP guidance and methodology ↗
- ONS mid-year population estimates through Nomis ↗
- ONS December 2024 local-authority boundaries ↗
- ONS local government restructuring ↗
Full extract and source notes (JSON) ↓ · Complete area table (CSV) ↓
DWP workbook published 2025-12-18. Extract checked 2026-10-05. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Boundaries: ONS Open Geography Portal; Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right.
