The eligibility guidance on the LSC website says that payments of housing benefit are ignored as income, but on the financial eligibility form (allownaces section) it asks for rent net of housing benefit - effectively taking housing benefit as income...

Can anyone shed any light on this apparent contradiction?

the value of HB is not added in to the calculation of gross income, but in deducting allowable expenses in order to arrive at net disposable income, only the rent a person has to pay out of her pocket is deducted, not the total rent, if some HB is in payment. it does make sense, i think. for a change. : )

They originally had HB counted as gross income, and then full rent allowed as an expense, but quickly realised that nobody could do the calculation that way (or rather, nobody got it right, which is a slightly different thing). It also made families with large numbers of children more likely to fail the gross income test (this was before the ceiling for that was altered for families with large numbers of children) as they may well have been in larger houses attracting more HB in the first place.

They originally counted DLA in gross income and then knocked it off as an allowance too.

But, hey, they used to fund the Specialist Support Projects too didn't they? Let's not give 'em more credit than absolutely necessary Jan!

Andrew, i don't expect them to care what 'we' think of them. Credit is for 'funders' to extend or withdraw, and the 'funded' should know their place and shut up. isn't that how it works?

fraid so Jan. They're going to cut all of our funding next year aren't they?

i don't know what's going on, andrew, but the cuts in our contract could close us down for good in April. but we (law centre staff) are to blame, for our underperfomance against contract.