Broadband Social Tariff

EnnisR

Hi all, just bolting on to this post as I receive housing benefit, working & child tax credits on the old style system as I am self employed and universal credit is a killer unless you are employed and receive a regular wage on a regular frequency. So BT, EE all the big ones only allow Universal Credit claimants to get on the social tariffs.
I found one, KCOM, that accept housing benefit in their acceptance criteria but I don't live in an area they cover.

Has anyone on the old housing benefit managed to get on one of these social tariffs and does anyone know who to contact at DWP? As far as I know my housing benefit is paid by the local authority as it is a different department to my working/child tax credits. 

Seems bizarre these providers are allowed to determine their criteria at random when people are clearly on low incomes so it looks like I am going to have to lose my landline to afford the internet

Robbie64

For BT and EE it's not just Universal Credit but also other means tested DWP benefits. However, Housing Benefit isn't one of the qualifying benefits for these two companies.

https://www.bt.com/broadband/home-essentials

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/costs-and-billing/social-tariffs

The second link above gives a link to all the main telecoms companies social tariff pages. KCOM seem to be the only ones with a broad list of benefits though they have a restricted qualifying condition for UC (you have to have no earnings at all from employment or self employment) which the likes of BT don't have.

Spoonie_Turtle

The reason probably is that the companies don't want to have to check with individual councils, only DWP. 

Muttleythefrog

They're private companies so can probably set pretty much what they like as criteria... but as per Spoonie I would think this comes down to ability to verify.. Universal Credit for example they can do directly with DWP as opposed to dealing with housing benefit through large numbers of councils possibly in manual ways.