Severe Disability Premium and Supported Accommodation

This issue surfaced about 10 years ago
https://www.rightsnet.org.uk/forum-archive/index5bf9.html#7527
From my perspective it appears to remain an area of concern especially where 2 or 3 persons may be living in a supported living setting and where ALL are in receipt of either DLA high/middle rate care or PIP and should be “treated as living alone”  and entitled to the severe disability premium to be included in their IRESA.
Usually these persons also have individual Tenancy Agreements.
I understand the criteria for Severe Disability Premium entitlement are: 
You satisfy the means-test
You get the middle or higher rate of DLA care component, or either rate of the PIP daily living component
No one gets Carer’s Allowance for you
You are treated as living alone.
Even if other people actually live with you, you may count as living alone.  For example, anyone who also gets the rates of DLA and PIP above does not count.  Other people who do not count include joint occupiers (ie, people who are also liable to pay rent separately and aren’t your close relatives), resident landlords, and live-in carers (if you pay a voluntary or charitable organisation for the services of the carer)
However. I continue to see many persons in supported accommodation who are missing the SDP - despite the fact that they should be “treated as living alone” and many have been for many years and may be entitled to significant levels of backdating ?
It also appears that these persons may often not identified by DWP in their trawl of those with missing premiums ( as a consequence of migration errors to CBESA instead of IRESA).

Yes, it’s a common issues, and it appears in broader circumstances than those you have identified above. Non-non dependants under a joint tenancy for example (no need for the second person to claim PIP).
Lots of threads about it on the forum.

My understanding is that as long as they have an individual tenancy and the only room they have sole use of is their bedroom (with the other rooms being for communal use) they count as living alone.  It therefore does not matter what benefits the other residents get.

A little history might prove illuminating

Up until the mid-1990’s many people who needed support to live independently were able to claim certain charges (known commonly as general counselling and support charges) that they were liable to pay to support services providers through Housing Benefit.  However, in 1997 the courts put a stop to this in ruling that only charges for the provision of adequate accommodation could be funded through HB.

So, the government set up the Transitional Housing Benefit scheme as a gateway to the Supporting People programme between 2000-2003.  This was a scheme implemented by local authorities as a means of identifying those in need and funding the support through the SP programme while paying the core rent through HB.  And the government gave LA’s a lot of money to do this.  I was one of two WR workers for our LA seconded to work on this.

Now, up until the early 2000’s there were many people, largely people with learning disabilities, living in adult placement schemes funded by the local authority and registered under The Registered Homes Act.  Many were receiving Income Support and had long term DLA awards with payment of the care component suspended.  Social Service managers saw the SP fund as a way of paying for the support of their service users, thus making savings on their own budgets.

So, my colleague and I used to travel round the borough converting these adult placements into tenancies (in reality, licenses) drawing up proper legally enforceable licenses agreements, getting then de-registered and banging in HB claims.  Then we’d get the DLA care components back into payment and, where applicable, the SDP.  We also used to work on helping to set up tenancies for new placements in independent supported living schemes.

We had a lot of fun and games with the DWP back in those days.  Many DWP officers just didn’t get what was going on.  The first battle was with getting the DLA care components back into payment as the DWP’s response was often along the lines of “we can’t do that as the LA is funding them”.  We had to explain that the LA was now funding the costs of support only and not the accommodation costs.

The second battle was then with the SDP as we had to get the DWP to understand that due to separate liabilities to pay rent these services users were not non-dependants of each other and that the income and source of it, of other non-dependants in the dwelling was entirely irrelevant to an individual’s SDP entitlement.

It did take some time to change the mindset within the DWP, but progress was inexorably made and the problems gradually became fewer.  I’m somewhat surprised (but not totally, given the chaos within the DWP) that these issues are still going on