NEARLY £200 million a year is being paid out in benefits to claimants in the Taunton and Wellington Parliamentary constituency.

An online postcode tool launched by the TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) now allows people to look up how much they pay for welfare spending locally.

TPA is an independent grassroots organisation campaigning for lower taxes and giving taxpayers a ‘voice in the corridors of power’.

Its calculator showed a £197,268,791 constituency payout in the 2025-26 financial year.

The bill equated to £1,750 per resident, up by 15.1 per cent in two years, compared to an average local wage of £36,242, a figure up by 9.7 per cent in two years.

The payments were broken down as:

  • Universal Credit £106,512,024
  • Personal Independence Payment (PIP) £48,275,556
  • Housing Benefit £15,875,417
  • Disability Living Allowance £12,544,973
  • Employment Support Allowance £8,759,789
  • Carer’s Allowance £5,301,032

TPA said 9,340 households claimed Universal Credit, and there were 6,417 PIP claimants, an increase of 16.3 per cent in two years.

There were 3,350 people eligible for a Motability vehicle, while 40.1 per cent of PIP awards were for psychiatric conditions, including 27 people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

One-in-18 working-age adults were assessed as ‘limited capability for work and work-related activity’ (LCWRA), meaning they had severe health conditions or disabilities making work or work-related activity ‘unreasonable’ for them.

TPA believes rising welfare spending is putting pressure on public finances and it wants politicians to take action to reduce the overall cost of the benefits system.

Chief executive John O’Connell said the tool showed ‘what our broken welfare system means in the real world’.

He said: ‘It brings the big numbers we hear on television and radio right down to what it means for you and your town.”