How long can housing benefits service take / Can they reject if you meet criteria??!

fluffymovie

Hi Beta

Sounds like you have had a really raw deal. To be honest, being in the business and the area, I have not heard great things about that council!!

I would suggest that you ring up again and ask to speak to a manager. At that point, keep calm and polite. Explain the mess with the tenancy agreement because as this was their error and they did not offer you the opportunity to remedy it before closing your claim, you have some leeway.

Above all, just be polite and to the point. I would also refer you to your local councillor as that tends to get a response fairly fast.

If you feel that it is a case of maladministration, then you need to make a formal complaint in line with their procedures and best way is to submit a letter headed Official or Formal Complaint.

As a benefit officer, I would just say that since recession hit, councils have been slammed with work. At the end of last summer, we were assessing claims within 48 hours but now it is taking us 3 - 4 weeks. Problem is, when we fall behind, we get calls chasing the claims quite understandably, but that ties up my assessors and prevents them from actually paying the claims!

It isn't always a fun job and I am not asking for sympathy but do please try your best to be polite when you ring as the assessors are only human and can only do so much. Despite what some people seem to have been suggesting on other theads, not all of us sit around doing nothing!!

Hope it works out for you soon. Good luck with the new job!

greenface

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1581099

quote from beta 89 inthis thread

ALoha mate.

While i do understand that you do have yoru own personal views of trading/investing, and everyone is entitled to their own view,
i am giving advice from my experience as a crude oil trader. :rolleyes:
(I trade on the stockmarket everyday for a living, specialised in crude oil, although i occasional trade the dow and a few other markets).

also 19yo waiting for housing benifits too

aitchykate

I know when I first applied for benefits that I got incapacity benefit pretty much straight away but housing benefit took about 3 months and I kept being asked for more evidence when I had provided all the evidence asked for in the first place.

One particularly annoying thing was that, at the time I shared a 2 bedroom flat with someone else. Not a very unusual setup, I thought, but even though someone came and saw that we had separate bedrooms, separate food cupboards, separate shelves in the fridge, and asked me all sorts of questions about whether we did our washing separately, shopping separately etc I was still told that I had to provide evidence of the flatmate's income or I'd get nothing because he would be assumed to be able to pay all the rent. Fortunately he did let me take copies of his payslips, bank statements, and NI card but really I think it was an invasion of his privacy and also mine in that I had to reveal to him that I was applying for housing benefit. And all totally irrelevant to my claim. Even if he were a millionaire (which he wasn't) there was no way he was going to pay for my half of the rent. It seemed to me to be creating a divisive system where people on benefits are not allowed to share flats with people not on benefits.

Later, having managed to get housing benefit I got a letter saying that someone else had moved in to the property (they hadn't) and that I owed huge amounts of council tax and was liable for back payments because I hadn't revealed this. It turned out it was a mistake and that someone new had moved into a house three doors away down the street but when I got that letter I was terrified and became quite ill with worry.

Then, more recently, I had a letter saying that the rent officer had decided to decrease the amount of housing benefit I got, although there certainly hasn't been any decrease in rent prices in this area.

One does feel rather at the mercy of the system.

aitchykate

elaina79 wrote: »

LHA doesn't always cover the cost of the rent though. My rent is £730 and my LHA at the full allowance giving the rooms that I need is £464. The rest I make up for myself.

Similarly, LHA nowhere near covers a realistic rent. I am disabled and have a child. We live in a 2-bedroomed flat and the housing benefit I get is £404 whereas my rent is £540, which is pretty low for the area. Rents in housing association properties are lower but the absurd thing is that I know people who have very well-paying jobs who are in those properties, while I have been on the housing list for four years and am classed as low priority because I do have a flat to love in, even though, I put on the form and wrote again to say that I need to live somewhere cheaper and there is nowhere cheaper on the priavte rental market.