HB liability while temporarily decanted.

Three households needed to be temporarily decanted from a new development to carry out major repairs. They were decanted from between 2 - 5 weeks into hotels. There was no rent due on the property during the decant. The HB department involved are insisting on a new claim from the three households, stating that the period of the decant was a break in the claim.

My understanding was that they would continue to be treated as liable for rent during a rent free period for major repairs and therefore, their claim is continuous and should not have been stopped. Am I missing something or are HB?

Was Paragon picking up the hotel bills?  So the families had no liability at all for any dwelling during their spell in the hotel?

The problem with that is that they don’t seem to satisfy the threshold requirement of being liable to make payments and so for a short spell they are not entitled to HB. Reg 7 (treated as occupying a dwelling in varoius circumstances) only helps where there is a liability make payments for one of the two dwellings (either the empty one or the temporarily occupied one).  This is not the same as the situation catered for in HB Reg 8 where the claimant has arranged for work to be done at his/her own expense and the landlord knocks the bill off the rent (in which case the claimant is treated as if s/he was still liable). Nor is it a rent free period built into the normal rent cycle, which requires an adjustment of all the figures used in the HB assessment the rest of the time.  So it appears that a new claim might be required.

There are efficient ways around it though:

- if the Council did not make a decision to end HB and is only dealing with the matter entirely in retrospect, they can make a closed period superseding decision and let the current award continue undisturbed
- if a decision to end HB was made at the point when they entered the hotel, or before they came back at any rate, the Council could accept very brief statements as a new claim.  Something like: “I confirm that, apart from having spent a couple of weeks in a hotel, none of my other circumstances have changed and I hereby claim HB.  I assure you that it is perfectly safe to use the same info you were relying on before my short absence.”

Thank you HB Anorak, that’s really helpful.