Information for Landlords

If you are unfamiliar with Housing Benefit, you should read through the information pages on this website. There are many rules which may limit the amount of benefit that we can pay.

This may mean that a tenant will not receive enough benefit to pay their rent in full.  If your tenant is in receipt of Housing Benefit at a rate lower than the rent you are charging, your tenant is responsible to pay the difference.

Please note, we are restricted in what information we can share with the landlord without the tenants written authorisation.  Even if Housing Benefit is being paid direct to the landlord, the information shared is restricted.

Direct Payments to Landlords

From 7 April 2008 under the new Local Housing Allowance scheme that was introduced by Government the tenants right to request that their Benefit is paid to their landlord was removed. 

In general, all Benefit payments must be made direct to the tenant.  The Government hopes that paying Housing Benefit to claimants will promote personal responsibility and empower them to budget for themselves; that it will help the unemployed to develop the skills they will need when they move into paid work; and that it will encourage them to open bank accounts and pay their rent by standing order or direct debit, thereby helping to promote financial inclusion.

However, there are some exceptions.  If it is considered that the tenant is a ‘vulnerable payer’ and incapable of managing their financial affairs, they are unlikely to pay their rent or have accrued 8 weeks rent arrears, we can consider paying Housing Benefit direct to the landlord.  In the event of rent arrears exceeding 8 weeks,this may be without the tenants consent.   

Any direct payment made to a landlord will be paid every 4 weeks in arrears.  We prefer to make payments direct to your bank account ( BACS ) as this method of payment can provide many advantages:

• Payment is direct to you and therefore eliminates the possibility of payments being delayed or lost in the post
• The payment is treated as cleared funds allowing you earlier access to the money
• Also saves you time and trouble paying the benefit cheques into your bank account and the payment is now automatically transferred

Further more, you will also receive a remittance advice and a statement to confirm that the payment has been transferred, enabling you to monitor the benefit payments being received.

If you do not want Housing Benefit to be paid directly into a bank account, it can also be paid be cheque.  However, please be aware that some bank / building society accounts may take several days to cash a cheque.  Bromsgrove District Council will not exchange a Housing Benefit cheque for cash at any of our offices so you must ensure you have adequate means of cashing them.

For more information on Local Housing Allowance, please click here: Local Housing Allowance information.

Tenants With Substantial Arrears

If you can provide us with evidence that your tenant is more than 8 weeks in arrears with their full rent payments, you can contact us to arrange to consider having future benefit payments paid direct to you and to decide if your tenant should be classed as 'vulnerable'. We will not be able to pay you for any of the arrears if payments have already been sent to your tenant, and you will have to resolve the collection of these arrears yourself. However, we will try to ensure that any future sums are paid directly to you to ensure that the arrears do not get any larger.

Overpayments

Sometimes when we pay Housing Benefit and the claimant's details change, we may end up making an overpayment which we will ask the claimant to repay. The effects of the overpayment get more serious if the claimant fails to inform us of the change of details for a long period of time.

Claimants are given clear instructions when they apply for Housing Benefit that they must inform us immediately if they or their household member's have a change of circumstances.  However, despite this, claimants can sometimes fail to report a change that affects their Benefit entitlement and overpayments of Benefit may occur. 

If we have made payments directly to you and these were incorrect because of information that you failed to provide, we may require you to repay the overpayments to us.  An overpayment may be recovered from you in the following ways:

Invoice

An invoice shall be issued requesting full and immediate payment.  If you are unable to make this payment you can contact us to discuss your repayment options.

Ongoing Benefit Deductions 

If you fail to repay an overpayment which we have demanded, we may recover the overpayment from future direct payments of your tenants benefit.

Blameless Tenant Recovery

If we invoke these powers (Social Security Administration Act 1997 Section 16), it means that each tenant for whom you are being paid Housing Benefit will have their direct payment reduced by the amount of the overpayments we are collecting. You cannot recover the reduction by asking the blameless tenant to pay more rent.

Appeals

For information on your rights to appeal, please click here: rights to appeal.