Will my Housing Benefit be re-determined?

CTX

Hello. My Landlord put my rent up on the 9th November but I had the automatic reassessment that's done every year back in the summer. I've heard that you can only be assessed once a year if you remain at the same address. What's happened now is the person that was running the lettings agency that my Landlord uses has retired so now we have another agency that just took over.

So I have recieved a letter from Housing Benefit saying that because there is a change of payee my housing benefit has been reassessed. I didn't know they did that so I thought great but then realized that they've reassessed with the old rent and not with the new higher rent.

So I went to the council today and a woman wouldn't let me see anyone and told me I would be reassessed anyway because of the rent increase and refused to believe (that if you remain at the same address) you can only be reassessed once a year.

The thing is, the last time my rent went up they refused to reassess me until the next year but she wouldn't listen.

So it looks like if the payee changes you get reassessed which is great and in the letter they sent me they said if you dissagree with the decision contact us within a month. So all I need to do is disagree, tell them the rent is higher now, and be assessed on the new higher rent but the woman today wouldn't let me and insisted I would be reassessed anyway.

If she is wrong I will be out of pocket until next summer and I'm on the sick and get no DLA so I'm permanently skint so this is very important to me.

Is she right or wrong? If you tell me she's wrong I'll have to write to the council.

Thanks.

pmlindyloo

According to this from the Local Housing Allowance Guidance manual

Rent increase/decrease
3.100 LHA cases can be reviewed where there has been a change in rent
since the annual review, either an increase or a decrease. This is to
avoid the situation where tenants could be faced with a shortfall in
meeting their rent until their case could be reviewed the following
April.
HB and HB (SPC) reg 13C(2)(d)(i) (ii), (iii), (iv)

Have you actually given them evidence that the rent has increased?

It seems that they have reviewed your HB award because of a change of payee but have not reviewed it because of a rent increase.

How often has your rent increased at your current tenancy?

pmlindyloo

The other thing is you may not be covered for all the rent increase if your eligible rent is blow what you pay. So if your local housing allowance is £100 per week and your rent increases to £102 per week you would only be paid the £100 and would have to find the extra money yourself.

So please tell us what is you local housing allowance for your circumstances (you can look this up on your local council website) and what is your rent?

Marmiter

Are you on the old rent officer scheme? Or are you on LHA?

If you are on RO, then your rent is referred to the rent officer at the same time each year. Any rent increases are only taken into account at this point.
If you are on LHA, then your HB would have gone up but *only* if your rent was lower than the LHA rate before it increased.

You should contact your housing benefit section and ask them which scheme you are on, and request a discretionary housing payments form.

If you are on the old scheme, you can be asked to be transferred to the new scheme. Before you do this, you should check if your applicable LHA rate is higher than your current RO award.

CTX

Thanks everybody for giving me such great answers!

Pmlindyloo, yes I took in the evidence yesterday of the rent increase and they scanned it.The rent at this tenancy was increased this year on November 9th but also in October 2013 and in October 2012. When it was increased in 2012 and 2013 I was made to wait nearly a year until they covered the increase!

Marmiter, thanks for giving me this information, beacause I've had to wait in the past and cover the shortfall I'm clearly on the rent officer scheme.

OK I've just been to the council website and the LHA rate for a one bedroom is £96.91 per week and £419.94 per month and my rent has just gone up to £95 per week so it looks like it would be covered if I was moved to LHA. The thing is, for years the council have always made me pay a part (top-up) of my rent. They made me pay £7.50 a week although earlier this year they increased that to £8.50 a week. Does anyone know why they do that and would it change if I was on LHA? As you can understand I'm now covering the extra £10 a week in rent so the top up is now £18.50 a week! I only get £204 per fortnight with no DLA so now £37 of that goes straight to the Landlord and with council tax of £9 I'm losing £46 of the £204! You can imagine how skint I am lol!

The benefits I recieve are ESA work related activity group and housing benefit. Although I've been on the sick for years they have never given me DLA. I don't apply for it because I was told that it only applies if you need someone to look after you. I would have thought that severe social anxiety disorder and agoraphobia would at least get me mobility but I was told I can't get anything unless I need someone to look after me.

So what should I do now? Because the benefit was just reassessed because of the change in payee I have a month to disagree with the decision. I took in evidence of the rent increase yesterday and now should I write in, tell them to reassess using the new higher rent? But what about LHA? If that would be better maybe I should find out before I write?

Can I ask them if LHA would be better over the phone or would I have to write in about that aswell?

Thanks for helping.

Marmiter

Just to confirm, if you are under 35 you will only be allowed the shared room rate (which is lower than the 1 bedroom rate).

If you are definitely on the RO scheme, it does sound as if you would be better off on LHA. But you really should make an appointment with someone in the HB dept of your local council to go through your claim.

They would need to cancel your claim for a week, so you need to put it in writing that you wish to be put on the LHA scheme. They may make you complete a new form to check that they have all the correct details on their system.

You will obviously miss out on a week of HB, so you should make sure that you have the means to pay your rent out of your ESA. In the short term, this would leave you with less money but would mean that in the long term you would have less top up to pay each week.

With regards to the £7.50/£8.50 did you have an overpayment? This doesn't sound like a standard recovery rate though, so I can't think what else it could be.

How often do you pay your council tax top up? At our council you can ask to pay over the whole year (rather than just 10 months). Our council tax support scheme also protects people on ESA, so make sure they have applied the correct exemptions to your claim.