UC and DHP

How will DHPs be paid under the UC system, as UC is not paying ‘HB’ and an award of HB has to be made under current rules for an award of DHP, how will it work in practice ?

DHP’s will continue to be administered and paid by local authorities even when someone is in receipt of UC.

If a person is in receipt of any amount of UC and they have housing costs (i.e. rent) they will be able to apply to the LA for a DHP. The LA will then go down the usual income and expenditure route to decide if they are going to award a DHP and how much they will award.

The difficulty will be in deciding what to award as a DHP. Currently, if a HB claim is in payment, it’s pretty easy to establish what the shortfall between the HB payment and the actual rental liability is. Under UC it’s one payment so the LA will be responsible for deciding how much to pay as a DHP. Guess this could mean in some instances, they could be awarded a higher DHP if they were receiving UC than they would if they were receiving HB.

I also think it potentially means more people will be able to apply for a DHP. Under current rules, you can only apply for a DHP if you receive HB. Under the new rules, a person has to be in receipt of UC to apply for a DHP. So, if someone doesn’t currently qualify for HB but if they applied for and received UC, even if it was only a small award, they could then apply for a DHP.

Its an interesting question how this works…

Lets says its a spare room subsidy case.

My guess is that your advice worker encouarges the UC claimant to go to the HB office, who take in the DHP application and make contact with the UC service centre via a SPOC (specified point of contact) the information is then fed back via the HB SPOC.The HB office will then take their decision. If the DHP is agreed, the award (if its a social tenant) will have to be then paid direct to the claimant rather than the social landlord.