Daughter waiting 3 months for continuation of HB

ceejayblue

My daughter is a single parent, in February 2019 her landlord issued a S21 eviction notice as they wanted to improve the property (it needed it!). She managed to find a new property but needed to move in before the S21 date of 15 April. The landlord's agent decided to hold her to 4 week's notice but her new landlord needed her to move in by 2 April. The old landlord agreed to her finally moving out on 10 April and the HB office allowed a small overlap allowance.

Since then she's had nothing but problems with the HB office! They've lost all the documents she gave them concerning her eviction and the new tenancy and now 3 months on she's had no HB payment at all, they are still assessing her! She overheard one HB officer say that they had been sending documents to the wrong department all day (this was a day she'd taken documents up twice to make sure they had what they need!). If it wasn't for us she would be in arrears in the new property and with two children she can't afford to get into arrears and risk eviction. She's never been in arrears in all the years she's received HB. She works part time and claims Working and Child tax credits. She has provided the documents at least 3 times that they've asked for!

This situation is becoming unbearable for her and us as we can't pay the rent forever! Has anyone any ideas on what we can do ? Its very stressful for us all.

[Deleted User]

Time to call in the politicians to give the dept a kick up the .... either a local councillor or her MP.

WhenIam64

By all means try the local politicians but the official route is the Local Government Ombudsman.

https://www.lgo.org.uk/

The process is to register a formal complaint with the council and get them to try to resolve it first. There may be a second stage at the council then it is onto the LGO. The local council here had its very first LGO fine for mishandling a HB issue.

What appears to be happening is that the teams that deal with (legacy) HB are being reduced so they don't have the time/skills to deal with these claims which are moving over to UC.

Is there a reason why she wasn't transferred over to UC?

calcotti

WhenIam64 wrote: »

Is there a reason why she wasn't transferred over to UC?

If she’s just changed address within the same local authority there is no reason for her to required to claim UC. She is entitled to continue to receive HB.

ceejayblue

She was already on the original system and it was just a case of transferring the details to her new address. As far as I am aware in our area only new claims go onto UC, this was an ongoing one so wouldn't be moved over,

Definitely going to put a complaint into the council this week if she hasn't had an update.

poppy12345

ceejayblue wrote: »

She was already on the original system and it was just a case of transferring the details to her new address. As far as I am aware in our area only new claims go onto UC, this was an ongoing one so wouldn't be moved over,

Definitely going to put a complaint into the council this week if she hasn't had an update.

All areas since December 2018 are now a full UC area. If she changed local councils when she moved this would have prompted a move to UC and wouldn't be just a simple change of address, unless she was claiming severe disability premium.