Crown tenancy

My pension age client is planning to rent a house from Greenwich Hospital, which according to their website is a Crown charity. Their Northern Estate includes a number of farms and houses in the Berwick area which are managed by a local estate agent and not by the Crown commissioners. The client has been told this would be a Crown tenancy, and it certainly looks like that would be the case.  Help with the rent would therefore be via Pension Credit rather than Housing Benefit presumably. Do the LHA rules or the bedroom tax apply in the case of Crown Tenancies?

The bedroom tax doesn’t apply to pension age tenants.

Hi Brian

Our understanding is that Crown Tenants’ rent cant be covered by Housing Benefit (so LHA and the Single Room Subsidy rules wont apply to your client). Instead, like you say, the rent is covered by housing costs under Pension Credit - see IS regs Sch 3, para 15-17, which will be followed by PC. There are no similar size criteria for these housing costs.