Housing benefit flat share

problem123

I am living in a property with the following number of rooms, three bedrooms and two living rooms. There are three people living in the property, two adults on a joint tenancy and a child. The 2 adults are not living together in that sense with one adult being a single parent has a child of 5 years old. Each person occupies one bedroom each In light of the fact that one flatsharer has a child, would it be correct in terms of her paying for / claiming for / two thirds of the housinng benefit. and the second flatmate paying for the other third. she has one bedroom, her child also and they all share the living room together. The other room is used to for storage.


We are looking for advice as to how to split the rooms up in the property so that the maximum housing benefit can be secured. Should we say that we each have a living room that we use separately, or should we say that there is a spare room in the property?
What is the law in terms of the amount of rooms one can claim for in shared property? I am concerned that I will not receive the correct amount of rent to cover the property that I am sharing.

seven-day-weekend

I think if you apply for HB when there are two adults living in the house, AFAIKthe rent would be asumed to be 50-50 and HB paid accordingly.

They may not pay the full amount as they may class the fact that you have a spare room as the house being too big.

Hopefully someone will come along soon who knows more.

november

House shares are complicated for housing benefit purposes.

I would say that housing benefit would be dependent on the tenancy agreement and the circumstances.

So if the tenancy agreement is joint then the liability for rent would most likely already be 50% each regardless. If the tenancy agreement doesn't specify one tenant doesn't have exclusive access to some of the rooms then both tenants are sharing all the rooms. You can't have one tenant claim 2/3 of the housing benefit if they are only eligible under the tenancy agreement to pay 50% of the rent.

Housing benefit - one child would give that tenant eligibility for benefit on a 2 bedroom property. With the single person they would be eligible for maximum benefit on a one bedroom flat if over the age of 25. If under 25 they would be eligible for a room in a shared house. They may be assessed anyway for housing benefit for a room in shared house if they are living in a shared house.

Dependant on the housing benefit form you usually just get to state what it says on the tenancy agreement e.g. you have a joint tenancy, there are so many rooms in the house, which rooms you have sole access to, which rooms you have shared access to etc.

So basically housing benefit looks at the value of the property e.g. is it worth the rent that is being charged and sets a rate for that. Then it looks at each individual within the property and what is the maximum housing benefit they would get for their circumstances and tenancy.