HOUSING BENEFIT: COMMON REPAIRS DISALLOWED

bkmla

I am in receipt of Housing Benefit (HB).

I live in an eight-apartment block of flats and am a shared owner (one-quarter). My factor, Parkhead Housing Association (PHA), owns the remainder of my property.

Recently, my HB was reassessed.

After 25 years of allowing the common repairs part of my service charge as an eligible charge, Glasgow Council (GC) disallowed it in its reassessment.

This was after I submitted to GC a document from PHA confirming common repairs are estimated to be £663.37 for the period 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025.

I discovered that common repairs had been disallowed after requesting a mandatory reconsideration and a statement of reasons. Unfortunately no reason was given as to why common repairs have been disallowed.

I have since appealed the HB decision and am preparing a letter stating my grounds for appeal.

I understand that the criteria for eligibility are as follows:

    You have to pay them to occupy your home, and

    they are related to the provision of adequate accommodation, and

    the council accepts that the service charges are not excessive.

In relation to the latter criterion:  ‘the council accepts that the service charges are not excessive.’, are there any tests as to whether a service charge is excessive?

If there are, it could avoid a situation in which I claim the service charge is not excessive and GC claim ‘Yes it is – end of conversation.’

Does anyone have any ideas?

sheramber

What would be excessive would depend on what the charges were for.

HillStreetBlues

I doubt the council can maintain not paying the full SC if they can't give SoR for doing so.
Judge "why are you not paying full service charge?"   Council "Dunno"

Newcad

Is "common repairs" in this context a payment towards regular maintenance?

Or is it a contingency fund for any future building repairs that might be needed?

The first is usually allowable as a "Housing Cost/Service Charge" for benefits.

The second is not usually allowable as a "Housing Cost/Service Charge" for benefits, because it's sort of half way between savings and buildings insurance.

In Scotland you have a "Factor Float" which can be a mixture of the two things - in which case some (maintenance) parts of the float may be allowable in benefits payments and other (contingency fund) parts not.

So it looks like your council has drcided that your Factor Float, or at least not all of it, can be included in your HB.

You need to sort out which parts are which and argue for the regular maintenance costs (grass cutting, ,communal TV aerial, etc ) to be included in your benefits.

bkmla

The figure supplied by the Housing Association is an estimate of expenditure to be incurred for the period 01.04.24 - 31.03.25.

This method of calculating my service charge eligible for Housing Benefit has been accepted by Glasgow Council for many years.

Kim_13

Even if a proportion of the amount were a contingency, what is the OP to do? PHA decided upon it, not the claimant, and I doubt telling them that they cannot pay because it isn’t an allowable expense and they don’t have the means to make up the shortfall is going to stop them from repossessing the property. If you don’t have the means to make up the shortfall while an appeal is in progress, ask if there is any kind of discretionary fund available.

Either the expense should be allowed, or PHA should not be able to structure the service charge in a way that leaves the least well off at risk of being made homeless. 

If there is no movement, you may wish to contact your MP once you know who that is.

HillStreetBlues

Have you been in contract with PHA  on how they have calculated the estimate for repairs?

Newcad

Fair enough then, unless £663 is much higher than previous years then it looks like someone (new to the job?) at the council has misunderstood that they are regular maintenance/service charges.

However I have to say that £633 service charges does seem quite a high to me, how do the factors break that down?

Mine is a tenth of that for this year, I'm not in Glasgow but ...

Grumpy_chap

bkmla said:

I live in an eight-apartment block of flats and am a shared owner (one-quarter). My factor, Parkhead Housing Association (PHA), owns the remainder of my property.

If there are 8 apartments, why do you own 1/4 of the block?
Is that a typo?
If you own 1 apartment of 8, then you own 1/8 of the block.  I assume you don't own a second apartment in the block.

Your service charge is £663.37.
If there are 8 flats, the total levy for all eight should, therefore, be £5,307.  
If the total levy for all eight is £2,654, then you appear to be paying a double-proportion.

That is a bit complicated, but if a DM picked up on owning 1 flat in 8 but service charge for 1/4, they might then say that is disproportionate and, hence disallow, on "excessive" costs.

This might all be rather theoretical as I am not sure a DM would look to enough detail to spot this type of matter.

HillStreetBlues

@Grumpy_chap
OP owns 1/4 of their flat and there are 8 flats in the block.  So in percentage terms 1/32 of the block.

Grumpy_chap

HillStreetBlues said:

@Grumpy_chap
OP owns 1/4 of their flat and there are 8 flats in the block.  So in percentage terms 1/32 of the block.

Ah, yes, thank you - that makes sense now, silly me 
That is so obvious, shared ownership of the flat.
I read it as shared ownership of the freehold and could not understand why the OP owned one flat (of 8) but 1/4 of the block freehold.
How easily even the plainly obvious can be misread.