One in five people in parts of Shropshire are claiming housing benefit, new figures reveal today.

They show 20 per cent of households are dependent on the hand-out across the Telford & Wrekin area.

This compares with the rest of the county — which includes Shrewsbury and Atcham, Oswestry, North Shropshire, Bridgnorth and South Shropshire — where an average of 12 per cent of families are reliant on the benefit.

Telford & Wrekin has seen a 1.2 per cent increase in the proportion of claimants in the last two years, rising from 18.7 in August 2007 to 19.9 in May 2009.

Across Britain, almost 18 per cent of homes are dependent on the benefit.

In some areas such as Hackney (42 per cent) and Tower Hamlets (38 per cent) in London, housing benefit claimants account for four in 10 of all households.

The average housing benefit payment is worth £81.03 a week – more than the standard rates for jobseeker’s allowance or income support (£64.30).

The annual cost of housing benefit has risen by £2.7 billion since 1997. In total the Government has spent £180 billion on housing benefit since then according to data obtained and released by the Conservatives.

Shadow work and pensions secretary Theresa May said: “These are truly shocking figures and once again provide more damning evidence of Labour’s complete failure to tackle welfare reform.

“Housing benefit can provide valuable help to people in work or pensioners, but the reality is that for too many people it represents part of a broader picture of benefit dependency.

“We need to look very carefully at a system that results in almost half a community reliant on benefits.”

Yesterday, Work and Pensions Secretary Yvette Cooper announced that new rules to housing and council tax benefits would result in around 200,000 working families being £20-a-week better off.

Child benefit will no longer be taken into account when calculating entitlement to the two benefits.

She said: “We want to do more to help families who are working hard to get by during the recession.”

By London reporter Sunita Patel