BENEFITS caps have been imposed on nearly 100 families in Southend, new figures have shown.

Housing charity Shelter warned the issue is causing households to be “tipped into homelessness”.

The latest Department for Work and Pensions figures show between September 2018 and August this year, 95 families had their housing benefits docked in Southend while 93 families had their benefits docked in Basildon.

The majority of capped claimants were single parents with children. Couples with children accounted for a further 22 per cent of cases in Southend and 15 per cent in Basildon.

In the Castle Point area, 43 families had their benefits capped while this fell to 23 families in the Rochford district.

The benefits cap is a limit on how much in total a family can receive.

Over the last year, 13 households in Southend and 12 households in Basildon were docked more than £100 a week and since benefit capping was first started in April 2013, 687 households in Southend and 684 homes in Basildon have been subject to the measures.

Shelter’s chief executive Polly Neate said: “As these figures show, the brutal benefit cap is continuing to wreak havoc on family life. Too many are battling to put food on the table and pay the rent, while others have been tipped into homelessness.

“Surely we should be helping these families up – not making their lives even harder. We constantly speak to parents who desperately want to work all the hours they can to avoid the cap, but come up against childcare issues and insecure or part-time hours. The cap is cruel and ineffective, and fails to recognise that single parents might face barriers to working.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey said: “Our welfare reforms are supporting more and more people into work. The benefit cap ensures we have a fairer system – fair for the taxpayer and fair for claimants.”