Council tenant, no change of address for HB, claim ended.

I have two very similar cases, so I’ll just describe the first one.

A vulnerable tenant moved from one of our properties to another. He was getting HB at property A and his support worker was supposed to help him complete his COA to property B, but didn’t. After the tenancy at A ended HB saw from our housing system that he had moved and noted that he had been tenant at B for two months (he delayed moving in due to a stay in hospital). HB wrote to him to say they needed “some more information” from him as they had been told he had moved from A to B, and he needed to provide it within a month “otherwise your claim for housing benefit… can’t be assessed”. Then under the heading “what we need from you” they said “You need to reclaim housing benefit ... for your new address.”

I don’t know if any other letters were sent (such as a decision letter with appeal rights) - which could be another issue.

I have pointed out what I think is wrong with this:-
1. The decision to end HB doesn’t appear to have any lawful basis - they know it was a COA, so at best they should have suspended the benefit and asked for more information if they weren’t sure.
2. The letter is confusing and misleading. It looks like a request for further information on a new claim but asks him to make a new claim.
3. If it was supposed to be a suspension and request for information then the letter (and process) needed to comply with Part III of the D&A Regs.

At the moment I’m not getting anywhere - apparently they are satisfied that their procedure is correct. My feeling is that they are treating this as if they have just found out that a tenancy has ended, without any knowledge of where the claimant has gone on to. But they did know, and their decisions have to based on what they know.

I’m planning to assist the support worker to help the tenant to appeal, but would welcome anybody’s observations or comments. I’m slightly uneasy as it seems so obviously wrong to me, and HB are usually very good at listening to me, so I start wondering whether I’ve missed something.

Hi
If your customer was in a council property, its likely the claim was ended when the rent account closed - ourt system “reads” the rent liaibilty as Nil and therefore does a mass calc, as cant have HB without a rent liability

But thats flawed, because, as you say, simply moving house does NOT terminate a claim - the correct process is to suspend and ask for the info needed

A form ISNT needed ( a row I have had many times with lots of LA’s - just because a form is the easiest way for you to ask for/ read the info you need,
if the customer ssends an email/letters with the info ( i moved from House A to House b
Mty tenancy ended on 1/5/2023 at house A and my tenacy at B started the same day
heres my tenancy agreement. MY incoem hasnt changed , Imoved into House b on 21/5 as i was in hospital from 1 May as an inpatient.) then theres no reason NOT to assess the claim

The problem is staff see “cancelled” as a status and think someone has physically done that and made that decision, rather than it beiung a system generated result of nil rent - noty the same thing at all…...

Ask for a statement of reasims as to why HB at house A ended and why, if it was because of a rent ending at house A, they didnt suspend /request info necessary

I think it’s the spell in hospital that has caused the complications here.  What is the exact sequence of events?  I think it must be one of the following options:

1. The tenancies are seamless (no gap between end of first tenancy and commencement of second tenancy), and he went into hospital before the end of the first tenancy/commencement of the second one.  He first occupied the new home after being discharged from hospital

2. The tenancies are not seamless and he was in hospital both on the date when tenancy 1 ended and the later date when tenancy 2 began

3.  The tenancies are seamless and he went into hospital after briefly moving into dwelling 2 (I don’t think this happened from what you say)

4. The tenancies are not seamless and he went into hospital after briefly moving into dwelling 2 (again, I don’t think so)

5. The tenancies are not seamless and he was staying somewhere else between the end of tenancy 1 and the beginning of tenancy 2, then went into hospital before tenancy 2 started

6. As 5, except tenancy 2 had already started while he was staying somewhere else and didn’t move in before he went into hospital

7. The tenancies are seamless but for some reason he was staying elsewhere at the start of tenancy 2 and then went into hospital before moving in.

Also, is he working age and is dwelling 2 specified accommodation?  And if whatever the Council has done is supposed to be a decision ending his HB award, at what stage in the chronology was that decision made (in particular had he already moved in before the decision was made - I think yes??).  It would be a great help to his case if someone moved his stuff into the new home ahead of his arrival too.

Possible outcomes are:
- continuous HB entitlement, no strings
- continuous entitlement but higher rent at dwelling 2 a late reported advantageous change so eligible rent remains at old level initially
- gap in entitlement dealt with as closed period supersession
- HB ended prospectively, new claim required (something he has said or written might stand as notice of an intention to claim in that case)
- HB ended prospectively, goodbye and off to UC with you
- Inchoate “decision” does not pass muster as a decision at all, whole thing needs to be dealt with afresh

Thank you both.

Yes, it was option 1. The “decision” to end HB was made two days after tenancy A ended (which was two months after tenancy B started, but about a week after he had actually moved; following discharge from hospital/nursing home).

A side note: The rent on B was paid by Housing Options until he moved in - I don’t think he was expecting to be in hospital for so long, and they wanted to make sure he would have suitable accommodation ready as soon as he was discharged.

He is working age and there is no specified accommodation involved although I don’t think this is relevant as there is no break in tenancy.

So my view is that the award should have continued (given that there was no legitimate request for information, or suspension). I hadn’t thought about the question of the new rent level - it is about £10 higher in property B so is an advantageous change. Does it make any difference that HB knew exactly what the new rent was - because they got it from the housing system?

OK, so it would seem reasonable to view the signing of Tenancy B as an indication of no intention to return to Tenancy A, from which he was absent at the time.  He will be entitled to HB for Tenancy A until the end of any notice period that he could not reasonably avoid, if there is such a period, otherwise until the Monday after it ceased to be his normal home.

He will be treated as occupying Dwelling B from four weeks before he moved in, or earlier if he is able to rely on R(H) 9/05.

It is possible there will be a gap between the end of entitlement for Dwelling A and the commencement of entitlement for Dwelling B, but as the decision was not made until after he moved into Dwelling B that should be a straightforward closed period supersession.

As to the eligible rent, he is not responsible for telling the Council how much rent he pays them, they tell him how much rent to pay.  But is it possible to detect by machine alone which dwelling is his normal home, especially if he has two tenancies running in parallel for a couple of months?  A pedantic HB officer could make a case for saying that his failure to notify HB promptly of his exact whereabouts and intentions at the time mean that he doesn’t get the extra £10 until they found out that he was living in Dwelling B.  But it is a pretty compelling case for an extension of time.

I get the point about intention to return, but there’s no suggestion here that they’ve made any decision about that (otherwise there would presumably have been an overpayment as well as stopping the benefit). So this may be academic, but he had an unavoidable rent liability until he moved out of property A two months after his intention apparently changed - HB could continue for up to four weeks after the tenancy at B began?

I think I’m a bit clearer about this now. The grounds for appeal are that the decision to terminate HB was not made until after they thought (correctly) he was at B. The decision was made at a time when there was entitlement to HB, so even if there was a gap (which looks likely, but hasn’t been raised), it should have been a closed period supersession. They didn’t have a reasonable belief that there was no ongoing entitlement; just that there had been a change of circumstances. If they felt they needed more information then the proper course would have been through Part III of the D&A Regs.

When he started to occupy B his tenancy at A ended. From then on there could be no doubt on the system about his rent level. So the question about rent level for the four weeks before moving in (Reg 7(8 & 9)) only arises if he requests backdating - in which case it’s clear which property he was talking about. So isn’t the only question about whether the late backdate is reasonable?