This is turning into a bit of a personal mission!

On the one hand I'm trying to get DWP to recognise the importance of this in realtion to HB/CTB (potentially 900,000 families affected). Of course current customers will get more benefit but it will bring in so many people to benefit. The SI has not yet been laid and guidance/publicity around take up has not been issued to LA's.

On the other hand the absence of the SI and guidance/publicity means that many LA's are doing nothing either because they have forgotten about it OR are waiting for the SI etc before even thinking about it.

I'm wondering what the adviser community is doing in relation to advance claims / promotion, in advance of 5th October, and whether you have had any dialogue with your benefits depts about strategy's to maximise take-up either before or after the coming into force ?

Generally, we are waiting for the SI to be published. We have a strategy in hand that includes widespread publicity in the local authorities own paper and the local press plus a trawl of cases that have been refused in the recent past by a similar amount to Child Benefit. The Tech guys say it can be done.

regs now out .. see today's rightsnet news story

Disregarding child benefit and child care charges in the calculation of income: New housing benefit and council tax benefit regulations

Hi there,

Now the SI has been laid, I was wondering what you were planning to do in relation to the publicity in the authorities own paper.

I am hoping to publish something about this in our newsletter, but have had nothing to do with past take-up campaigns so not really sure how to go about this, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

We are a large RSL and I've just put the proposal to my managers that we should be doing some active take up on this. We're considering looking at publicity on rent account statements, in our own publications, text messages to tenants not on Hb , leaflet drops or money advice sessions in our local offices.

new hb guidance - see today's rightsnet news - says that whilst some people will become newly eligible for HB/CTB as a result of the change -

'There are currently no plans to run a specific take-up exercise or additional publicity .... However, the government will work to join up the delivery of financial support and help local authorities in improving take up of tax credits and benefits.'