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 person making a claim for Housing Benefit needs to complete a Housing Benefit claim form.
The form can be downloaded, or the person can either request a form by contacting us on 0161 909 6506 or by calling in to the Benefit Office in Swinton.
Where the person is also claiming Income Support or Jobseeker’s Allowance they can complete the Housing Benefit form included in the claim pack sent to them by the Jobcentre Plus Office dealing with their Income Support or Jobseeker’s Allowance claim.
It is important that they make their claim for Housing Benefit straight away as any delay could result in loss of benefit.
Where possible they should send the information requested on the claim form to us with the form, but if any of the information is unavailable at the time, they should send their form to the Benefit Service straight away and state on the form when the information will be provided.
To speed up the process of dealing with the claim it would be very helpful if you could provide proof of rent which confirms the information stated on the Housing Benefit claim form.
The Housing Benefit form confirms the information that is required about the tenancy and rent.
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, 4 weekly
Local Housing Allowance
Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is a change to Housing Benefit for people living in private rented accomodation the change affects how Housing Benenfit is worked out and how it is paid.
LHA is based on the number of rooms people are allowed, not how much the rent is. 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 10
- any two children of the same sex up to 15
- any other child
In addition they are entitled to:
- one living room if one to three people live in the property
- is two living rooms if four to six people living in the property
- three living rooms if seven or more people living in the property
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?
Housing Benefit will normally be paid from the Monday after the claim form is received. However, if the claim form is received in the same week as the tenancy started, we can pay Housing Benefit from the Monday of that week if the rent is expressed on a weekly basis.
Housing Benefit cannot normally be paid for a period before the person moves into the property even where they have a liability to pay you rent before they move in.
However, in certain circumstances, a claimant can be treated as occupying a property for up to 4 weeks before they moved in, for example, if the delay in moving is necessary to adapt the new home to meet the disablement needs of the claimant or a member of the family. They may need to contact us for advice if they are unsure whether they can get benefit before they move into the property.
Can my tenant ask for their Housing Benefit to be backdated?
Your tenant can ask for their Housing Benefit claim to be backdated for up to 52 weeks from the date they make their request in writing. They must be able to show “Good Cause” as to why they did not apply for benefit earlier and that Good Cause must apply throughout the period they have requested backdated benefit for until they put their request for backdated benefit in writing.
They can either apply for backdated benefit on the Housing Benefit claim form or they can complete the backdate request pro-forma which they can get by phoning 0161 909 6506 or they can write to us with details.
How is Housing Benefit paid?
Local Housing Allowance will normally be paid to the tenant.
You can ask us to pay LHA directly to you where your tenant has rent arrears of 8 weeks or more. You will need to put your request in writing and advise us exactly what period the rent arrears are in respect of and how much the arrears are. We will then suspend further LHA payments and write to your tenant and ask them for their comments. We can also pay LHA direct to you if the tenant is unable to pay their rent because they are vulnerable.
We will advise you and your tenant of our decision once we have all the facts available to us.
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 on-going 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.
Downloadable documents
If you are unable to view documents of these types, our downloads page provides links to viewing software.
This page was last updated on 29 April 2008
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