Information for landlords about housing benefit

This guide is provided to assist private landlords in understanding the rules relating to their tenants' claiming housing benefit, and the landlord’s responsibilities where payments of housing benefit are made direct to them.

What is housing benefit?

Housing benefit gives help towards housing costs for people on a low income or receive Income Support or Jobseeker’s Allowance.

The person who makes the claim must be liable or must be the partner of the person who is liable to make payments in respect of the dwelling that they occupy as their home.

How is a claim for housing benefit made?

The easiest and quickest way for someone to make a new claim for housing and council tax benefit is by phone. They need to phone us on 0161 909 6506 and we will make them an appointment.

If they are making a claim for Income Support, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance or Pension Credit they can make their claim for housing and council tax benefit via the Department for Work and Pensions at the same time as they make their claim for any of these benefits and they will send details to the council.

It is important that they make their claim for housing benefit as soon as they move in to a new property or become eligible to claim as any delay could result in them losing benefit.

You can assist your tenant by providing proof of their rent when they make their claim.

What information is required about the tenancy?

The tenancy agreement may not provide all of the information that we need and we may require you to provide additional information as requested on the form.

It would help us to speed up the process of dealing with the claim if you could ensure that the proof of rent includes the following information:

The landlord or agent's name and address (business address)
The date that the tenancy agreement started
The amount of rent you charge for the property
What is included in the rent, e.g. fuel, water, meals, etc
How often the rent is due, e.g. weekly, monthly, four-weekly

Local Housing Allowance (LHA)

From 7 April 2008, LHA is based on the number of bedrooms a tenant's household is entitled to and living rooms no longer form part of the calculation.

This is called the size criteria and is worked as follows. The claimant is allowed one bedroom for:

every adult couple
any other adult aged 16 or over
any two children under age ten
any two children of the same sex up to 15
any other child

Joint tenants will only be able to claim LHA for themselves and their dependants.

Single claimants aged under 25 will be entitled to the standard rate for a room in shared accomodation. This will be based on properties where the tenant has a room of their own but shares all or some of the facilities.

From what date will housing benefit be paid?

They can ask for their housing benefit to be backdated and any request must be made in writing. They must be able to show "good cause" as to why they did not apply for benefit at an earlier time and that good cause must last throughout the period in question.

If your tenant (and their partner) are under 60 years of age housing benefit can be backdated for up to six months.
If your tenant (and/or their partner) are aged over 60 years of age housing benefit can be backdated for up to three months.

How is housing benefit paid?

Housing benefit payments in respect of private tenants will normally be paid directly to the tenant. But there are circumstances where we pay the landlord.

We must pay housing benefit direct to the landlord where their tenant has rent arrears of eight weeks or more, unless we are unable to pay a particular landlord (see details below). You need to advise us about rent arrears in writing confirming the period of the rent arrears, total rent arrears outstanding and how much your tenant has paid you in rent for this period. You should initially phone us to inform us of rent arrears of eight weeks or more (or earlier if you are concerned) and we will suspend housing benefit payments until the matter has been investigated. We will contact your tenant to ask them to confirm the position regarding their rent payments and rent arrears.

We can pay housing benefit direct to you in other circumstances for example if the tenant is unable to pay their rent because they are vulnerable and/or unable to manage their financial affairs or if you have reduced their rent which means that they can afford to continue to live in the property. You need to contact us if you think we should pay their housing benefit direct to you. We may need to check information with other interested parties before we can make a decision.

When we have received all the information we need we will advise you and your tenant of the decision regarding future housing benefit payments.

Before we pay a landlord directly we have to be satisfied that the landlord is a “fit and proper person”. We do this by considering whether the landlord:

Has previously been involved in fraudulent acts related to housing benefit
Has habitually failed to report changes in tenants circumstances which they might reasonably be expected to know might affect entitlement, or
Has habitually failed to repay overpayments which they have been properly notified about and any requests for a review of the matter has been properly undertaken or made available

What information can you give to landlords about claims?

It is important that you understand that it is the person who is claiming housing benefit who is responsible for providing the information that we need to deal with their claim and also for contacting us about their claim.

We are unable to discuss housing benefit claims with you unless we have your tenant’s consent to do so. They are required to sign the declaration on the claim form if they wish us to discuss their claim with you.

However, if housing benefit is paid or will be paid directly to you and you have signed the claim form to confirm that you understand your responsibilities, we can give you certain information about their claim without their consent.

The information we can give you in these circumstances is as follows:

Details relating to payments that have or will be sent to you
The period the payments are for
Details about any overpayments that we ask you to repay

Where payments of housing benefit are made to you we will send you a notification letter, which will advise you:

When payments will start and how much housing benefit the claimant is entitled to each week
If their housing benefit entitlement changes or ends
If we are deducting an amount from their ongoing housing benefit entitlement in order to recover an overpayment

Landlord responsibilities when receiving direct payments

Where you receive direct payments of housing benefit you must let us know immediately if you are aware of any changes in the circumstances of any of your tenants that may affect their benefit entitlement.

For example you need to let us know if your tenant moves out of the property even if they are still liable for the rent at the property.

We expect you to make regular checks to confirm that your tenant is still living at the property where you are receiving housing benefit payments.

Housing benefit is normally awarded up to the Sunday following the date they moved out of the property if their rent is expressed on a weekly basis.

Do I have to repay overpayments of housing benefit?

If you do not agree with our decision to ask you to repay an overpayment you can ask us to look at our decision again. Details will be provided on the overpayment notification letter that we send to you. It is important that you write to us within one calendar month of the date of the notification if you do not agree with our decision.

Where we consider that the overpayment has been caused by fraud and the landlord has not been involved in the fraud we will normally ask the claimant to repay the overpayment, which has resulted from the fraud.