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Break in HB claim?

FWK77
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Welfare rights officer - Leeds City Council

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Hey just wanted a second opinion please:

Claimant on HB - tenancy ends and he moves out out of private accommodation on Wednesday1/9/21.
His new tenancy at his new private accommodation address starts on Monday 6/9/21 and he moves in same day.
In between he was staying elsewhere with no liability.

My instinct is that his HB claim actually ends on the Wednesday (rather than the Monday following as with some HB supersessions) and as such there has been a break in claim and he will need to claim UC for his HC now. I just can’t pin it down 100% from CPAG or my brief and very rushed foray into the regs and obviously if there’s any chance to stay on his ESA/HB legacy then he wants to take it.

Cheers!

Ianb
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Macmillan benefits team, Citizens Advice Bristol

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You say “..obviously if there’s any chance to stay on his ESA/HB legacy then he wants to take it” but that isn’t obvious. Is the claimant actually better off on ESA and HB, even if the opportunity exists?

Prisca
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benefits section (training & accuracy) Bristol city council

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what sort of rent liability was it at the 1st address? if it was a daily liability, then HB ends when the tenancy does, itf its anything else, hb carries on to the end of the benefit week

Even if it is is daily, he may still be able yo stay on HB because it may be treated as a closed period superssion ( assuming its in the same LA are)

Hb can only be terminated without being suspended first in a very few circumstances…  namely
UC hads been claimed ( HB Stop)/  one member of a working age couple reaches pension age * (exemptions apply!)
Customer dies
Customer confirms they are moving out of area/ moving somewhere where they have no rent laibility
A change in income/capital/non dep charge means they no longer qualify

So your guy tells HB he s moving - they **SHOULD ** suspend the claim and ask him to complete a change in circs form / provide proof of his new rent at new address - time limit is one month

So he completes a form on 7th September and provide proof of his rent

HB office look at the case on the 8th September - even if it was a daily charge and there’s no HB after 1st Sept, at the point they look at the claim again, (8th) there is a current entitlement - the claim is suspended not terminated, so its not permissible to terminate because of earlier nil entitlement if there’s a CURRENT entitlement at the point the claim is looked at.

However, if he emailed/called them and said Im moving into my mums for a while, ive moved out of my rented place and he did that BEFORE he moved into the new address, then the terminating looks to be correct and think would be difficult to revise that decision.

 

FWK77
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Welfare rights officer - Leeds City Council

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Prisca - 21 September 2021 06:22 PM

what sort of rent liability was it at the 1st address? if it was a daily liability, then HB ends when the tenancy does, itf its anything else, hb carries on to the end of the benefit week

Even if it is is daily, he may still be able yo stay on HB because it may be treated as a closed period superssion ( assuming its in the same LA are)

Hb can only be terminated without being suspended first in a very few circumstances…  namely
UC hads been claimed ( HB Stop)/  one member of a working age couple reaches pension age * (exemptions apply!)
Customer dies
Customer confirms they are moving out of area/ moving somewhere where they have no rent laibility
A change in income/capital/non dep charge means they no longer qualify

So your guy tells HB he s moving - they **SHOULD ** suspend the claim and ask him to complete a change in circs form / provide proof of his new rent at new address - time limit is one month

So he completes a form on 7th September and provide proof of his rent

HB office look at the case on the 8th September - even if it was a daily charge and there’s no HB after 1st Sept, at the point they look at the claim again, (8th) there is a current entitlement - the claim is suspended not terminated, so its not permissible to terminate because of earlier nil entitlement if there’s a CURRENT entitlement at the point the claim is looked at.

However, if he emailed/called them and said Im moving into my mums for a while, ive moved out of my rented place and he did that BEFORE he moved into the new address, then the terminating looks to be correct and think would be difficult to revise that decision.

Thanks for the response, appreciated. This client only presented yesterday and he hasn’t informed the LA of anything at this point. It was just a normal private tenancy arrangement it wasn’t a hostel or anything so I can only presume not daily basis liability.  Same LA area, into another 6(?) month tenancy.
So he would be completing the COA form today with the details of when he left his other address, when the tenancy ended etc.

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

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OK, well that should be a straightforward change of address.  Even if the Council takes the view that there has been a gap in entitlement (which I think is wrong actually - see below) it can be covered as a routine closed period supersession.

As a back-up argument, I would say there is no gap in entitlement anyway.  Always worth remembering that HB is a weekly benefit, based on “appropriate maximum HB” calculated for the purpose of ss130 & 130A of SSCBA 1992 on a weekly basis in accordance with HB Reg 80.  If there is an amount of AMHB for the week in which he moved out, and also an amount of AMHB for the following week in which he moved into the new place, there is unbroken continuous entitlement.

In a completely different context, in the early days of LHA when people found to their delight and surprise that the rates were often spectacularly higher than under the old Local reference Rent regime, HB claimants would regularly engineer a break in their HB entitlement so that they could reclaim under LHA rules,  The UT said in, I think, one of Derek Stainsby’s cases that there must a clear complete week in which the claimant has no entitlement to HB, otherwise there is no new award and no switch to the more favourable rent regime.

Diogenes
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welfare benefits, citizens advice, sherwood & newark

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My client was in B&B getting HB , she had a couple of breaks as the room was pre-let to other customers, she stayed with a friend for a few days between her occupation of the B&B, the council say she has broken her claim and can’t re-claim HB, I argue for a temp absence but they say as she had no liability in the break periods the claim is closed, any chance to challenge this ???

Diogenes
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my client had a break of 7 days in her temporary accommodation but she was temporary absent from her original tenancy due to essential repairs, would it be an argument that she has liability for rent on the original tenancy and so should be considered temporary absent from that tenancy and so keep her HB entitlement even though she had 7 days break from her temporary address and had no liability for rent at the temp address?

[ Edited: 18 Oct 2021 at 04:02 pm by Diogenes ]