Looking for a new flat in London, would renting from this organisation be covered under LHA?

holdorflod

Newcad said:

If it's a Private rental then it is subject to the LHA cap - and you can only be paid UC-HE up to the LHA cap - so for 99.9999% of private rental claims any included bills won't be covered anyway. (The basic rent won't even be covered in most private rentals).

That is the case if you're renting a whole property, but in most cases where you are renting a room privately with shared facilities, a good 90%+ of the time, bills are included in your rent.

Newcad

holdorflod said:

Newcad said:

If it's a Private rental then it is subject to the LHA cap - and you can only be paid UC-HE up to the LHA cap - so for 99.9999% of private rental claims any included bills won't be covered anyway. (The basic rent won't even be covered in most private rentals).

That is the case if you're renting a whole property, but in most cases where you are renting a room privately with shared facilities, a good 90%+ of the time, bills are included in your rent.

And as I said in the bit you quoted- The LHA rate will be nowhere near covering that 'all inclusive' amount..

 So to be able to afford the 'all inclusive' you will have to top up the LHA rate benefit that you get for housing (the UC housing Element) with money from elsewhere.
(Often/usually that will be from your UC Standard Element, which is what you are meant to use to cover your bills).

holdorflod

Newcad said:

 So to be able to afford the 'all inclusive' you will have to top up the LHA rate benefit that you get for housing (the UC housing Element) with money from elsewhere.
(Often/usually that will be from your UC Standard Element, which is what you are meant to use to cover your bills).

Rooms I've seen in shared houses/flats in London are around £800-£1000pm inclusive of bills. With UC, someone over 35 years of age is entitled to ~£1200 per month for housing.

Are you sure that UC will cover this if bills are included? I just keep hearing that they don't.

poppy12345

holdorflod said:

Newcad said:

 So to be able to afford the 'all inclusive' you will have to top up the LHA rate benefit that you get for housing (the UC housing Element) with money from elsewhere.
(Often/usually that will be from your UC Standard Element, which is what you are meant to use to cover your bills).

Rooms I've seen in shared houses/flats in London are around £800-£1000pm inclusive of bills. With UC, someone over 35 years of age is entitled to ~£1200 per month for housing.

Are you sure that UC will cover this if bills are included? I just keep hearing that they don't.

Newcad didn’t advise that rent costs will cover any bills that are included with your rent. You will not be able to claim for any bills that are included with rent. Please see Spoonies first comment on page 1. 

What they said was that your standard element of UC is for bills, including any short fall of rent. 

For a single person 35 and over they will be entitled to the 1 bedroom rate of LHA. You can check the amounts for the area here https://lha-direct.voa.gov.uk/

holdorflod

Ah ok got it, was a bit confused but you've cleared it up for me thanks 👍

Yamor

In the private rented sector, UC will cover all service charges (up to the LHA rate of course), and this can include amounts for utilities etc.
It is only in the social rented sector where there are limitations on which service charges can be included by UC.

holdorflod

Yamor said:

In the private rented sector, UC will cover all service charges (up to the LHA rate of course), and this can include amounts for utilities etc.
It is only in the social rented sector where there are limitations on which service charges can be included by UC.

Ok I'm back to being confused again, does this contradict what 

poppy12345 said above?

Quote: "Newcad didn’t advise that rent costs will cover any bills that are included with your rent. You will not be able to claim for any bills that are included with rent."

It is indeed UC and private housing that I'm wondering about.

Newcad

The confusion as shown on this thread comes because people use the word 'rent' very loosely, and to mean different things.

Usually people use 'rent' to mean 'all monies paid to a landlord'.
But if you look at UC benefits legislation you will see that it specifically refer to 'Housing Costs' and not 'rent' - that's because 'rent' can include more than just 'Housing Costs'.

(OK, the DWP will use the word rent here and there when they are trying to be informal, and MP's are buggers for using the wrong words to mislead, but where it actually counts it is always stated as Housing Costs).

In a private rental benefits will pay the actual 'rent' you pay to your landlord or your applicable LHA amount, whichever one of the 2 is lower.

• If the private 'rent' is higher than LHA then it does not matter what that private 'rent' includes or does not include - the most in benefits that you can get towards it is the LHA cap amount that applies to you in your area.
  What cap amount applies to you in your area depends on how many are in your 'household', and sometimes your age if you are single.
  
• Many/most 'rents' will be above the LHA cap whether they are all-inclusive or not, and so you can only be paid the applicable LHA towards your housing costs.
• LHA rates for an area are deliberately set in a way so that they are lower than most non-inclusive 'rents', and (almost) certainly lower than all-inclusive 'rents'.
  It was originally done that way so that the old Housing Benefit was not enough to be paying anything (or at least not very much) towards bills in an all-inclusive 'rent', and that has carried through to UC Housing Element.
• Yes, there may be a few exceptions to that where LHA may be paying a little bit towards bills, but those cases are very few and so they are overlooked.

In a Social rental the LHA cap does not apply and the actual housing costs will always be paid.
So for a social rental the DWP look at what the 'rent' actually includes and only pay the applicable housing costs and not any utility bills.
That is so that housing cost benefits are not paying your bills for you in social housing.

The end result of both methods is that Housing Benefit or UC Housing Element is not paying monies towards utility bills - (with a very few unusual exceptions to that in private rentals where a little bit may end up being paid towards bills, but certainly nowhere near the whole bill).

holdorflod

Newcad said:

The end result of both methods is that Housing Benefit or UC Housing Element is not paying monies towards utility bills - (with a very few unusual exceptions to that in private rentals where a little bit may end up being paid towards bills, but certainly nowhere near the whole bill).

Thanks for clearing that up. This is certainly true for pretty much all cases where someone is renting the entire flat/house themselves, as the cost of the rent+bills would exceed the LHA rate.

However from my searches, the vast majority of cases where you are only renting a room in shared accommodation both the following are true:

- Utility bills are almost always included in the rent you pay the landlord
- The rent including bills is a fair bit below the LHA rate someone over the age of 35 is entitled to

For example, on the higher end of rooms, I saw a pretty decent room w/ ensuite in a nice flat next to Harrods in Knightsbridge, going for ~£1100pm including all bills for example. The LHA rate for this location for someone over 35 would be ~£1250pm.

btw here are some threads which further add to the confusion about UC complaining about rent including bills in some cases:

- https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5936596/universal-credit-and-inclusive-bills-in-rent/p1
Quote: "Just been told I need to request from my landlord a breakdown of bills separate from my rent as it is currently an all inclusive figure and they only pay rent."

- https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6142049/uc-bills-included-in-rent/p1 
"I had my phone interview today for a new claim. I was asked how much my rent is, and whether it includes bills.
I pay a set amount per month, and the landlord covers bills. Apparently this is an issue as UC doesn’t cover bills. I was told I need to ask my landlord for a copy of his bills!"

poppy12345

I think there's some confusion here. Bills such as telephone, internet, energy, council tax etc etc are not included and UC will not include help for any of those. Those threads are correct and you will need a breakdown of all those costs when you apply for help with any rent.