Rent subsidy

A number of charitable landlords stipulate a rent of x on which HB is assessed and then make a refund if the resulting net liability seems unfair.  They commonly do this if people are working or have undertaken voluntary work, but there are other reasons I’ve always taken the view that this is an effective reduction of the rent and therefore fraudulent because the total the landlord expects the tenant to pay is less than what they tell the council it is

The only situation that I can think of where it might not be is where money is paid by another charity, which was at best only remotely connected with the landlord and where each individual case was assessed on its merits.

However I note that other consultants routinely recommend this practice on the grounds that these are charitable payments which can be ignored.

What do you think?

It isn’t the same practice though Chris surely?

Practice (a) is:

e.g. Rent £100, Income £200, Personal Allowance £100 = HB of £35.  (£100 excess income at 65%)  Liability of £65 which is refunded.  net rent £0

Practice (b) is:

e.g. Rent £100, Income £200 plus ignored income of £65, Personal Allowance £100 = HB of £35.  (£100 excess income at 65%)  Liability of £65,  net rent £65 met from charitable income.

The difference here is that in practice (b) the landlord makes the charitable donation before the HB is assessed.

It may be academic *IF* the landlord knows enough to work out the HB in advance, in which case (b) is fine but the income still needs to come before the HB is assessed.  I think (a) is clearly wrong.

It seems to me that this difference is a bit academic.  Most councils would argue that a landlord could do the calculation.  The landlord could say that they did not know the tenant’s income, but I think this would be a bit hard to argue if the landlord wanted to make a charitable donation- which would probably be based on a means test.

This sort of practice seems to be fairly widespread and I’m surprised that it has not attracted more comment

Is the receipt of the charitable income a notifiable CoC?

Not if it doesn’t affect benefit entitlement, but yes if it does