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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Housing costs  →  Thread

UC and temporary accommodation - should have claimed HB for new claim post 11th April

CHC
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Welfare rights team - St Mungo's Broadway

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Total Posts: 169

Joined: 22 June 2010

Client is in temporary accommodation. She made a new claim for UC on 1st June 2018, however as this is after the 11th April 2018 reg changes she should have also claimed HB. She had not realised this though and included all her housing costs in her UC claim.  She was notified after 3 weeks by UC case manager that she needed to claim HB but did not check her journal so did not get this message for several weeks, she attempted to make an online claim for HB but struggled to do this and abandoned her attempts, she then gave birth to her first child which further delayed her seeking help with the HB claim.  Her UC claim has remained live even though her income has been too high for an award until this month.

She was referred to me and we immediately put in a HB claim on 6th September and requested backdating. While normally HB can only be backdated one month, I was advised by my colleague that HB can treat the claim for UC housing element as a claim for HB, if this is the case could someone provide the relevant regs which cover this and I can point this out to the LA?

HB Anorak
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Benefits consultant/trainer - hbanorak.co.uk, East London

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I don’t think this works.  It is possible to claim HB from the DWP while also claiming IS, JSA and ESA (and Pension Credit as well for that matter) because the system has been designed to support that and it is written into HB Reg 83.  UC has not been added to that bit of the Reg because the system is not designed to include an HB claiming facility.

The claimant has one month to claim HB if they become liable for rent on temp/specified accommodation while already getting UC and they have a month from the date of the UC claim to claim HB in the case of a new UC claim.  But they cannot actually submit the HB claim to DWP.

Your claimant has missed the one month deadline.  But there is one other possibility: is the charge for the accommodation expressed as a daily amount?  If so, HB can be claimed at any time up to the absolute 12 month limit in s1 of the Administration Act.  See HB Reg 76(3) and (4).  This answer assumes that it is temporary accommodation of the type described in Reg 76(4).