Number of Black Country workers reliant on housing benefit jumps by 75%

Official Department for Work and Pensions statistics show that the number of employed people in receipt of housing benefit has gone up from 10,627 in 2010 to 18,640 last year.

The total number of people receiving the benefit, however, went up by just two per cent.

Housing benefit is offered to people on low incomes if they need support to pay the rent.

It has been controversially reduced for people in council or social housing if they have one or more spare rooms.

Critics dubbed this cut the 'bedroom tax' because it strips 14 or 25 per cent of the benefit depending on the number of rooms classed as spare.

Dudley North Labour MP Ian Austin said the increase was due to the cost of living.

He said: "Lots of working families in the Black Country are struggling to make ends meet.

"Wages here are below the national average and bills keep going up.

"Now thousands more Black Country families are having to rely on housing benefit because their wages just don't cover the rent.

"I want the government to help local families and bring down the benefit bill by taking action on low pay and high rent, including a higher minimum wage and a cap on rent increases," he said.

The figures show in 2010 there were 2,574 employed people in receipt of housing benefit in Dudley.

That figure was 4,161 last year.

However this was also a slight drop on 2013, when there were 4,202

In Sandwell 3,046 working people had housing benefit in 2010, but this went up to 5,386 by 2014.

In Walsall the rise was from 2,634 to 4,708 and in Wolverhampton the rise was from 2,373 to 4,385.

Across the West Midlands as a whole, 53,111 employed claimants had housing benefit in 2010.

Last year it was 88,198.