Recovering Cost of Meals in Supported Accommodation from Housing Benefit

Hi all,

Residents in supported accommodation cannot get any HB for the amount that they are charged for meals, but what costs associated with providing those meals can be charged to HB as communal service charges? For example, can the cost of provding a kitchen, buying cooking equipment, maintaining the kitchens and cooking equipment, and fuel used for cooking the meals be included in the communal service charges? If so, this would mean that only the cost of ingredients and the staff hired to cook the meals would be non-recoverable from HB?

I was hoping to find some detailed guidance on what costs associated with providing meals can be recovered from HB, as the HB regs don’t seem to provide much help on that front.

Grateful for any thoughts/suggestions you have about this.

There is an HB urban myth that communal services in general are eligible for HB.  The Regs only refer to fuel and cleaning as being eligible in respect of communal areas: otherwise, services provided communally are subject to exactly the same rules as service charges provided to the claimant’s personal accommodation.

Having said that, the HB Regs do subsidise meals.  The charge is only ineligible up to the standard amounts specified in the HB Regs.  To the extent that the cost of providing the meals exceeds that, the excess is eligible provided it does not reach an unreasonable level.  As to what is included within the scope of a meal charge, I would consider that kitchen equipment and catering staff are included as well as the food itself and the fuel used to prepare it.  If the catering staff double up on iother duties, the amount of time they spend shopping, menu planning, serving, clearing up etc would all be part of the meal charge as well as the time they spend preparing the meals.

Thanks, HB Anorak. Various costs other than fuel and cleaning are paid by LAs for communal areas, though I’m not sure if all of them are classed as ‘services’ as such.

Even schemes that didn’t provide daily meals would probably have a kitchen for use during one-off events, would they be unable to charge the cost of buying kitchen equipment and maintaining it to HB?

What I meant was that HB will cover these incidental costs associated with meals as part of the eligible portion of the meal charge: the ineligible deduction is never more than the standard amount.

Communal areas within the core rent will also be covered - just general upkeep of bits of the building that you share with others.  As you say, not a “service” as such.  Having a kitchen for occasional functions might come under that heading.

The ones that most often cause disputes are items that certainly would be ineligible services if provided to the claimant’s private accommodation, and providing them to communal areas doesn’t magic them into something eligible, e.g. TV and telephone/internet.  But the Regs make a specific exception for fuel and cleaning.

So, if it costs us £35 a week to provide three meals a day to a tenant, and we charge this to the tenant, £25.85 will not be paid by HB but the remaining £9.15 will be paid by HB?

Yes, that’s how it should work