When can a rent be referred to the rent office?

Rather unusual one I’m afraid. Client pays ground rent for a mobile home and gets HB to cover the ground rent. The amount of ground rent stayed the same for five years but when it was put up the HB dept said that they were not able to increase it straight away as the last rent determination was in September 2013 and this was less than 52 weeks ago - this is fair enough, it is clearly covered by 14(1)(g) HB regs 2006

I wasn’t clear as to why the September 2013 determination was made, the HB dept have said that they refer cases to the Rent Service every 52 weeks regardless of whether there were any changes or not and this is the part I am not clear about.

It seems from reading Reg 14 (1) (a) - (h) that this covers circumstances when a referral to a rent officer must be made.

What is less clear is whether the LA can ONLY refer to the rent officer when one of the criteria in Reg14(1) (a)-(h) applies or can they make the referral at any time without needing any particular reason to do so?

Any thoughts or observations gratefully recieved, especially reference to any regulations that permit the LA to refer to the rent officer regarless of whether anything in sub paras (a) -(h) applies

You may need to dig into the Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Order 1997 which says that a local authority, has powers to refer ‘in accordance with regulations made under section 136(2) or (3) of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 or section 122(5) of the Housing Act 1996’.

The list of events triggering RO referral in Reg 14(1) is exhaustive.  The 52-week cycle will tend to be dictated by the date of the original claim and if that puts you out of step with the tenancy cycle it can lead to a delay in a rent increase being picked up.  This used to be a particular probem when a shorthold tenancy expires and a new one is granted at a higher rent - because the rent has not increased undeer a term of the old tenancy it isn’t covered.  However, most conventional shorthold tenancies have now migrated to LHA.  These days it is mainly less conventional accommodation (such as caravan sites) which is still affected by the RO referral arrangements.  Which is what you have got here.

A rent increase under a term of the tenancy is one of the trigger events: Reg 14(1)(c) (you need to follow up the definition of “change relating to a rent allowance” to see this), but only if the existing determination is not restricted.

So if:

(1) the current determination covers the full rent and
(2) the rent is increased under a term of the current tenancy less than 52 weeks since the last referral

it should be referred to the RO.  Otherwise, it will have to wait until the next 52 week referral comes round.

Thanks to both of you for your replies, I was on leave and didn’t see the latest post until today. I think the problem is that the landlord has not built in any regular rent increases into the tenancy and the rise that gave rise to the issue came pretty much out of the blue. I imagine this means that the claimant will have to wait until the 52 weeks are up.