Housing benefit and child tax credits

MrsManson

Hi

I wonder if anyone can help.

I've been receiving housing benefit, but a few weeks ago made a claim for tax credits.

Once I received the tax credits award notice I then completed the online council housing benefit form to update the changes.

As tax credits are backdated, I gave the council all the dates and info on when the tax credits start from. The next day I then popped down to the housing office with all the paperwork of the award notice which they required as evidence.

Today I received a letter from the housing office dated a few days before I completed the online form.

The letter told me they had been informed by HMRC of the award and had made the amendments to my housing benefit.

Now their letter states the change in housing benefit is from the 19th May, which is the date they were told by HMRC and the date of the letter on the HMRC award notice which I got.

However, as we know, tax credits are backdated, and this is the info I gave to housing when I completed the online form. So of course the claim for tax credits runs from the beginning of April.

What I would like to know is will housing benefit only be affected from the date they are told by HMRC, ie 19 May, or will my housing benefit change again once they see all the info I have provided. So in effect if the latter is the case I will have been overpaid housing benefit during the period the tax credit claim started.

Just need to know basically if a housing benefit claim changes from the date they are told by the HMRC about tax credits, or the date the claim for tax credits started.

Sorry for the essay :-)

Housing_Benefit_Officer

Only from the date Tax Credits claim was processed by the HMRC not from the date it was backdated to.

MrsManson

That's great....thanks :-)

fluffymovie

We usually receive data from HMRC directly and use the dates that they tell us. The award itself, usually includes a small amount of arrears which are usually disregarded as capital and so have no effect on your award.

Please be aware that your benefit will likely change a fair few times due to the information we receive via our ATLAS system (how we find about TC changes!)