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Shared ownership and the UC Landlord Portal
For those who take an interest in these things, UC are now dealing with shared ownership within the same system as normal tenancies (previously they had to be managed separately - presumably because they don’t have bedroom tax?). There was an update on the Landlord Portal yesterday which explained it.
Landlords have to provide a new list of properties now to include shared-ownership yesterday. So I guess we’ll get that sorted today then; there’s nothing like advance notice (and this was nothing like advance notice). I am slightly confused though. I don’t know what the following bit means:-
“Properties that do not need to be uploaded to the portal
The following property types are still exempt:
temporary accommodation
specified accommodation.
Also exempt are properties rented at below market rate through a local authority housing register or an allocation process based upon greatest need.”
Okay, so temporary and specified accommodation are exempt. But “properties rented at below market rate through a local authority housing register…etc.” just sounds to me like it covers pretty much all social housing - which would be odd for a system which only applies to social housing landlords. Or does it mean something else?
That’s almost the exact opposite of what I would have expected - makes me suspect there is a typo there and it is supposed to refer to anything that is not vanilla social housing.
Many UC staff (and many HA staff as well to be fair) wrongly believe that non-social stock and other unconventional tenancies, but still within the regulated social sector, are subject to LHA, which I guess would be a reason for the system to differentiate them if it was correct.
The update at the end of this guidance page just says:
26 March 2024
When you upload your new property list, you need to remove properties used for temporary accommodation and supported exempt accommodation. You do not need to remove shared ownership properties.
.. so I guess the ” properties rented at below market rate” item was a red herring?
(previously they had to be managed separately - presumably because they don’t have bedroom tax?).
We’ve previously suggested that as well as potentially being wrongly caught by the bedroom tax, uploading shared ownership properties to the portal could have caused DWP to not issue advice to that resident about the availability of SMI loans. Has anyone seen if these issues have now been solved?