Our client lives in a ground floor private rented flat. The landlord also owns the upper flat. Both flats are identical: double glazed, fully carpeted and furnished. Our client's flat however also has a garage and back yard. Our Client has informed us that the rents are the same, but that the upper floor tenent receives an aditional £5 housing benefit. Our Client informs me that they are both in a similar situation: single and on Income Support.

I have not had much experience of this sort of appeal. Does the client have grounds? Should she make an appeal to the Rent services section of her LA? Any assistantance would be greatly appreciated.

Brian.

Your customer could apply to the Council for a Redetermination of the Rent Assessment. She would need to give reasons as to why she believes there are other properties available in the public sector for a higher rent than hers. If possible sending in cut outs from Property Papers etc would help. Applying it against only the upstairs property would not really be enough suppoting evidence. Be aware however that any new decision made by the Rent Service would be applied. This could increase, or decrease the amount currently being received.

Otherwise I would suggest applying for a Discretionary Housing Payment if she is having difficulties in paying the deficit of rent.

Pete.

In terms of the information which you have given, I think you need to be a bit careful about how you proceed. You perhaps need to be a bit clearer on why there is the discrepancy.

If it is a difference in the Rent Service assessments, well that can happen, daft as it may seem. It may be worth pursuing the option of getting the Rent Service to review the assessment, but as the previous respondant said, the assessment could go down rather than up.

But how sure are you that this is the reason? Maybe the top floor resident is being paid too much by mistake. Maybe there are circumstances of which your client is unaware.

I would have thought that the first thing to do would be to ask the council for a statement of reasons, then at least you would have a clearer idea of how to proceed.

As a sweeping generalisation / observation, in my experience rental charges for first floor flats tend to be a little higher than for ground floor flats. This may well be the reason for the difference in the R/O decisions.

Regards