One bed LHA rate following housing with family in homeless hostel

Hi all.
I have a client who is a non-dep of his mother. The family fled DA and were housed in a homeless hostel for over three months. Who does this exempt from the LHA shared rate and would this extend to my client as a family member?

I’m assuming from this that he is contemplating moving out into his own s/c accommodation, or perhaps mother and son are looking at a joint tenancy where each would be a claimant and half of the rent would be more than the shared accommodation LHA.  So you are wondering whether he can rely on having lived in a hostel as a non-dep in order to be exempt from the shared accommodation LHA rate when he becomes a single claimant in his own right with his own renter’s housing element.

I think so, as long as the definitions of “hostel” and “hostel for homeless people” are met, and as long as he was offered and accepted resettlement support services while living there.  The definitions are in para 29 of Schedule 4 to the UC Regulations:

“hostel” means a building—
(a) in which there is provided, for persons generally or for a class of persons, domestic accommodation, otherwise than in separate and self-contained premises, and either board or facilities for the preparation of food adequate to the needs of those persons, or both; and
(b) which—
(i) is managed or owned by a provider of social housing other than a local authority, or
(ii) is operated other than on a commercial basis and in respect of which funds are provided wholly or in part by a government department or agency or a local authority, or
(iii) is managed by a voluntary organisation or a registered charity and provides care, support or supervision with a view to assisting those persons to be rehabilitated or resettled within the community; and
(c)which is not a care home;

“hostel for homeless people” means a hostel the main purpose of which is to provide accommodation together with care, support or supervision for homeless people with a view to assisting such persons to be rehabilitated or resettled within the community

Many thanks for this - I just need to find the right case to try this on now

As above, anybody who has, for the necessary period, lived in a ‘hostel for homeless people’ within the terms of that definition and has “accepted services” within the meaning of para 29(4)(b) is covered by the exception. The circumstances of them doing so are not important so it makes no difference whether they were the UC claimant or not at the time. The exception would apply equally to somebody who had self-funded the hostel rather than relying on benefits or who had been put there gratis for example by a social services department.

So I don’t see that the fact that the person who proposes to rely on the exception happened to have been a non-dep on somebody else’s UC claim at the time would make any material difference.

I think it is more likely that the barriers you will run into would relate to (1) whether the accommodation fits within the definition of a “hostel for homeless people” rather than being, for instance, a privately run B&B or a self-contained void and (2) proving that your client was actually living there for the required period, bearing in mind that UC can’t read across to the HB systems to find this out for themselves and also that your client may not have been the person liable to pay for the property. You would probably need some paper trail to establish the residence and that the property is of the relevant type.