Housing benefit

spaceboy

We currently rent a 1 bedroom flat for £430 a month. There are three of us, myself, my partner and our 2 1/2 year old daughter. We are getting £80 a month housing benefit but it's going up to £99 soon. But we have another baby due in December so we need to move to a bigger property. 2 bedroom houses in the same street tend to be £675 a month to rent.

Can anyone tell me what increase in housing benefit we would get, roughly speaking, if we moved there? The rent would be £245 more a month.

sarahlouise28

There are a lot of factors that need to be taken into account - LHA in your area, your income/ capital etc.

The best thing to so would be to give your LA a call on Monday and ask for them to do a trial calculation - this will give you a more accurate idea of your entitlement if you were to move.

Naf

Dwp website has a really good benefit estimator, with a 'what if' option that will compare your initial calculation with any changes you input.

BigAunty

The Direct Gov or local council website will tell you what the Local Housing Allowance rate is for a 2 bedroom property (HB for a private property).

You can then put all your employment and LHA info into the Turn2us online benefit calculator for the December scenario which will indicate the HB/LHA due.

The fact that an extra bedroom for you is £x more is going to be irrelevant to the LHA calculation which will use the 2 bed LHA rate for the area and your employment income as the main factors.

LHA rates are based on the lowest third of local rents, the cheapest third. It used to be that it was based on the average (median) known as the 50th percentile of market rents but this changed to the 30th percentile in one of the changes to HB rules made a year or two ago.