LHA Rates & joint tenants ??

suethedriver

I have a 3 bed rental house. 2 joint tenants on agreement.
Mother..... working
Daughter & baby ..... benefits.
I spoke to the local office with my query but they didnt seem to understand my question ....
If the 3 bed house is eg. £150 per week (slightly less than lha rate)
Mother needs 1 bedroom
daughter needs 2 bedrooms .
The way i see it is, the daughter should be eligeable for 2/3 which is equivelant to 2 bed rate... and the mother pay the 1/3 to top up to £150
The benefits seems to have split the cost 1/2 each and are only paying £75 for the daughter and baby.
This doesnt seem correct to me ...
Anyone with similar situation or who can give me a simple explaination of this please.

HappyMJ

suethedriver wrote: »

I have a 3 bed rental house. 2 joint tenants on agreement.
Mother..... working
Daughter & baby ..... benefits.
I spoke to the local office with my query but they didnt seem to understand my question ....
If the 3 bed house is eg. £150 per week (slightly less than lha rate)
Mother needs 1 bedroom
daughter needs 2 bedrooms .
The way i see it is, the daughter should be eligeable for 2/3 which is equivelant to 2 bed rate... and the mother pay the 1/3 to top up to £150
The benefits seems to have split the cost 1/2 each and are only paying £75 for the daughter and baby.
This doesnt seem correct to me ...
Anyone with similar situation or who can give me a simple explaination of this please.

It's 50/50. According to overcrowding regulations the baby doesn't require their own room until baby is 1 year old. A child from 1 to 9 counts as half a person and a child 10 or over counts as 1 person.

Another way of looking at it is they are jointly liable for the whole rent between 2 people....not 3. The baby is not going to be on the tenancy agreement as being liable for 1/3rd of the rent.

Is £75 not enough to pay for her half of the rent? She'll get the 1 bedroom rate of LHA if she uses two rooms for herself rather than the room in a shared house rate which might help.

suethedriver

Thanks. That explains it easily ,baby was only born in march.
Yes the 75 is fine but just expected more .
Shame the benefits office didnt explain it like that.

tboo

Hi
The baby does require it's own bedroom
If the tenancy is a joint one and mother & the daughter are both named on the contract then get the tenant to tell the council they have worked it out wrong

It is 50/50 but see

Joint tenants within the same household
In some cases joint tenants may be part of the same household but are not treated as members of the same family. For example, the customer may have a non-dependent son or daughter who is a joint tenant but they maintain a common household.
Example
Lee has a partner and two children aged under 10. He is a joint tenant with his mother but they form a single household. They pay £150 a week to rent a three bedroom house and they both claim Housing Benefit (HB).
Under the size criteria the three bedroom LHA rate applies to both Lee and his mother because they form a single household.

They won't pay more than the rent though

Housing_Benefit_Officer

HappyMJ wrote: »

It's 50/50. According to overcrowding regulations the baby doesn't require their own room until baby is 1 year old. A child from 1 to 9 counts as half a person and a child 10 or over counts as 1 person.

Another way of looking at it is they are jointly liable for the whole rent between 2 people....not 3. The baby is not going to be on the tenancy agreement as being liable for 1/3rd of the rent.

Is £75 not enough to pay for her half of the rent? She'll get the 1 bedroom rate of LHA if she uses two rooms for herself rather than the room in a shared house rate which might help.

For HB purposes a new born child will require its own bedroom. We don't ignore a child for a year. The post above explains.