I have a client who is living in a property with the following number of rooms, three bedrooms and two living rooms. There are three people living in the property, two adults on a joint tenancy and a child. The 2 adults are not living together in that sense as a couple. One adult is a single parent who has a child of 5 years old. Each person occupies one bedroom each. In light of the fact that one flat sharer has a child, would it be correct in terms of her paying for claiming for two thirds of the housing benefit. And the second flatmate paying for the other third. she has one bedroom, her child also has a bedroom whilst my client occupies the third bedroom. They all share the living room together. The other room is used to for storage.

My client is looking for advice as to how to split the rooms up in the property so that the maximum housing benefit can be secured. Should he say that they each have a living room that they use separately, or should we say that there is a spare room in the property?

What is the law in terms of the amount of rooms one can claim for in shared property? My client is concerned that he I will not receive the correct amount of rent to cover the property that he is sharing.

Thank you

They have a joint tenancy - therefore they are each legally liable for paying 50% of the rent due, and are also equally and jointly liable for the council tax. How the actual usage of the rooms is made up is of no interest to the LA.

Providing the Rent officer says it's worth the rent being asked, each party can make an individual claim for 50% of the rent and CT, success of any such claims dependent of course on their individual cicumstances.

With two non cohabitating adults and one five year old child, three bedrooms is not over accommedated. The property is made up of three bedrooms, a lounge and a dining room - so that's what goes on the form.

Fot the younger reader, this is a configaration not often seen with newer "modern" houses, but much loved by previous generations - it was where you had carpet on the floor, and the best quality furniture and fittings you could afford - or looked after for a man who'd liberated them from an abandoned warehouse etc - The lounge you kept for special use - Deaths, wakes, Sundays, Christmas and when posh visitors, like the vicar or your elderly but affluent spinister Aunt came to call. No children were ever allowed in "the lounge" aka "the sitting room" (a North/south distinction) in the normal scheme of things ......but I digress....

The crux of the matter however is the manner in which your client wants to split the rent - I can see his point, but unless the tenancy agreement specifies something other than a 50% split, ie, exactly what each tenant is paying for, for the sake of the difference of one bedroom is it really worth the aggrevation ....?

If there are two living rooms then there's one living room too many for that number of occupiers.

Mike,

Have to disagree with you on this, guidance states that the LA is at liberty to apportion rent liability as it sees fit based on number of rooms used by liable parties. Guidance highlights a case where a single mother is joint tenant with other and uses two of the three available rooms (one for child). I would suggest that the benefit could be assessed on a two-thirds liability and would argue that as joint tenants are jointly and severably liable there is no reference as to how the full liability should be apportioned. if however there is written agreement as to the apportionment this would overide the LAs option to do this. This is not however the case with Ctax where the liability is equally shared among liable occupants.

Hi i've had a similar case, albeit some time ago.

Single mother with 3 children and elderly mother in 3 bedroom property. HB had determined claim applying 50% apportionment.

We appealed the decision on the basis that single mum should have 70% liability on basis of using 2 bedrooms elderly mother 30% for one bedroom. There were 2 living rooms but they shared these.

Single mum had been awarded full 50% liability and elderly mum only got about half of her 50% liability prior to appeal, so 75% met in total.

Appeal was allowed, and the net impact was that they received approx 12% more of full rental liability, 87% in total. Eldery mum's HB stayed the same but single mum's increased.

With regards to determining apportionment, I was unable to find any hard and fast rules at the time, but recall referring to LA housing policy regarding number of rooms required per household, to argue level of apportionment was reasonable. Tribunal accepted this. Only tricky point was that on the HB claim, claimant did not specify number of rooms that she had sole use of. She had also put 50% of the total rent as her personal liability. So its imporant to make it clear what the level of apportionment is on the claim form to avoid difficulties.

The tribunal accepted the arrangement made between the tenants, albeit it verbal as the tenancy did not specify level of apportionment. Tribunal just adopted a common sense approach!

Have a look at reg 10(5) general Hb regs, if not done so already. page 259 of HB legislation. Think this covers the case mentioned above.

good luck

I doubt this post will be popular, but nonetheless....

In the OP, the following was stated:

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"My client is looking for advice as to how to split the rooms up in the property so that the maximum housing benefit can be secured. Should he say that they each have a living room that they use separately, or should we say that there is a spare room in the property?"
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The above statement gives the impression that the clmt is prepared to make statements that do not necessarily reflect the reality of the situation so as to obtain HB at a level to which s/he would not otherwise be entitled to.

I respectfully suggest this is NOT the appropriate way in which to go about obtaining HB. HB is dependant on the facts of each case as they ACTUALLY stand. Statements should not be made to the LA if they misrepresent those facts.

IF I have misinterpreted the OP (always possible when dealing with a forum posting), I apologise unreservedly. If, however, my perception of the OP is correct, my comments stand in full.

Regards

I dont see that there is really that much of an issue here. Reg 12(5) requires that :
" Where more than one person is liable to make payments in respect of a dwelling, the payments specified in paragraph (1) shall be apportioned for the purpose of calculating the eligible rent for each such person having regard to all the circumstances, in particular, the number of such persons and the proportion of rent paid by each such person."

The two adults are jointly and severally liable for the rent, but one of them is a sinlge parent so that person can reasnably be expected to occupy more of the property given that (s)he is resonsble for a child.

Apportioning the rent was consideed by Mr Commissioner Jacobs in CH/3376/2002