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UC - calculation of the Housing Costs Amount following a rent increase
Hello,
Is there anybody who can tell me exactly when a claimant’s Housing Costs Amount in UC is increased following an increase in their rent?
My client is a social tenant so her Housing Costs Amount is not capped by the LHA. Like many, her rent liability increased from 1st April. Her monthly assessment periods run from the final day of each month to the penultimate day of the next.
She declared the increase to UC a couple of weeks in advance of it taking affect. However her statement for the assessment period of 31st March to 29th April has been calculated purely on the basis of the rent liability for the previous financial year (i.e. 2023/24).
Am I correct in saying that her Housing Costs Amount for the above assessment period ought to be calculated pro-rata so 1 day at the ‘old rate’ and 29 days at the ‘new rate’?
She should get the new rate for the whole AP.
Has the landlord verified the new costs yet?
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/social-rented-sector-landlord-portal
UC is calculated on a whole month basis, so there is no pro-rating in the manner you describe. The general rule is that a change of circumstances is effective from the start of the AP in which it occurs, assuming that the claimant reports the change in a timely fashion.
In this instance, that would mean that the change is applied from the 31/03/24 - 29/04/24 AP, but equally if your client’s AP was from (say) 03/03/24 - 02/04/24, the increase would be applicable for the whole AP despite the ‘windfall’ that this would create. The idea is that it is simplifies the calculation and that any gains and losses work out in a swings and roundabouts sense.
She declared the increase to UC a couple of weeks in advance of it taking affect
This might be the problem. I don’t think that UC’s systems are capable of dealing with these advance declarations and - who knows - the landlord might change their mind and let your client off the rent increase. She might need to re-declare it now that it has happened.
She declared the increase to UC a couple of weeks in advance of it taking affect
This might be the problem. I don’t think that UC’s systems are capable of dealing with these advance declarations and - who knows - the landlord might change their mind and let your client off the rent increase. She might need to re-declare it now that it has happened.
I would agree that this is likely to be the problem. UC cannot handle things that haven’t happened yet (you might say it has no future). So you can only notify a rent increase after it has happened. We get a lot of housing costs verification requests from UC from when we notify our annual rent increase up until it actually happens (so basically the whole of March). This year we managed to reduce the number a bit by explaining (in the rent increase letter) that tenants would have to tell UC about their rent increase, but they couldn’t do it until 1 April.
Your client should have a to-do on her UC asking her if her rent increased on 1 April. If she doesn’t then she can notify the rent increase as a standard change of circumstances for “Where you live and what it costs.” Alternatively, her landlord could notify UC for her - I have a list of vulnerable tenants which I go through to make sure the rent increase has been notified to UC - although this obviously only works if UC have recognised them as one of our tenants and put them on our list on the landlord portal.
Thank you all for your responses.
The DWP revised the client’s Housing Costs Amount (so as to use the new rent liability) after I left a journal message querying it.
Does anyone know what the legislative source of this rule is? It would be useful to quote if I ever come across the same issue again.
She declared the increase to UC a couple of weeks in advance of it taking affect
This might be the problem. I don’t think that UC’s systems are capable of dealing with these advance declarations and - who knows - the landlord might change their mind and let your client off the rent increase. She might need to re-declare it now that it has happened.
I would agree that this is likely to be the problem. UC cannot handle things that haven’t happened yet (you might say it has no future). So you can only notify a rent increase after it has happened.
I believe that a claimant can report a prospective change through the ‘Report a change’ area (I’m sure a future date can be inputted as the date in which a change takes effect). However there clearly seems to be some breakdown in DWP processes which means that they are not appropriately actioning all these changes where the declaration occurs before the change itself.
Just the quick question; which date is considered as a date of change being reported; when client does it in their UC account or when social LL confirms the housing costs?
I am asking because client reported change in one AP and the LL in the next AP. Client got paid the old rate for the AP in which they reported the change. Was the system waiting for LL to confirm?
Does anyone know what the legislative source of this rule is? It would be useful to quote if I ever come across the same issue again.
It’s at para 20, sch 1, D&A Regs 2013.
Just the quick question; which date is considered as a date of change being reported; when client does it in their UC account or when social LL confirms the housing costs?
The issue is when the change was ‘notified to the relevant office’. If the claimant has told the DWP about the change, surely that condition is satisfied, even if evidence to verify the change is only received later.
(And, in any case, if we were to go by the date of the landlord’s verification, then surely the claimant would have clear good reason for the delayed notification insofar as the landlord’s delay is outside the claimant’s control).
She declared the increase to UC a couple of weeks in advance of it taking affect
This might be the problem. I don’t think that UC’s systems are capable of dealing with these advance declarations and - who knows - the landlord might change their mind and let your client off the rent increase. She might need to re-declare it now that it has happened.
I would agree that this is likely to be the problem. UC cannot handle things that haven’t happened yet (you might say it has no future). So you can only notify a rent increase after it has happened.
I believe that a claimant can report a prospective change through the ‘Report a change’ area (I’m sure a future date can be inputted as the date in which a change takes effect). However there clearly seems to be some breakdown in DWP processes which means that they are not appropriately actioning all these changes where the declaration occurs before the change itself.
Hi James - I don’t believe you can put a future date when reporting a change - the screen won’t allow you to progress if you input a future date.
So if a tenant reports a change effective from 1 April 2024 and puts the date of change as say 15 March 2024, because that’s the date they are reporting the change, then when the verification of housing costs task is sent to the social landlord surely it will be rejected as incorrect because the rent didn’t increase from 15th March. So the tenant will have to wait until 1st April onwards to report the change again, this time correctly.