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UC paid but HC refused as deemed to be specified. HB start date?
Hey
I have a situation whereby UC has been claimed including for HC.
I’ve come to the party late - UC still not paid due to awaiting information.
It looks like the UC will be paid from August 2023 when this info is provided but I have been advised that the HC are not going to be included because the claimant has specified they live in ‘supported’ accomm. when making the UC claim.
As it happens I think it is likely a managed tenancy situation and so should be HB, but the HB claim has not been put in yet. This is what I will now be doing, any thoughts on when the HB should start from? I cant see anything under reg 83 but not sure if I’m missing something. It must be a common problem for UC not to pay HC in specified situations and then leave people getting directed to claim HB instead, after the event, and potentially losing out on a large amount of help as they presumed UC would pay HC.
Any request for backdate would only go back a month.
Cheers in advance!
You’ll have to hope that there is something that could be construed as notification of an intention to claim HB back in August - contact with the local authority, or possibly even contact with DWP.
Contact with DWP could stand as notification of an intention to claim if the claimant was on a legacy DWP means tested benefit and only claimed UC because they thought they needed to do so in order to get their housing costs met. If there was some contact in which the subject of housing costs came up before the legacy benefit terminated, that would put a marker down for the date of the HB claim. In fact, something has just occurred to me (thinking as I type here):
- ESA(ir) etc doesn’t terminate until two weeks after the UC claim, so the claimant remains entitled to ESA etc on the day of the UC claim and for another fortnight
- Assuming housing costs were declared in the original claim, or at least within the next fortnight, this could be seen as being, in substance, notification of an intention to claim HB directed to the DWP
There is a problem: such a notice of intention must be sent to the “appropriate DWP office”, which is an office handling claims for JSA, ESA (and IS too, despite this no longer being possible) - see HB Reg 83(5)(e) and Reg 2. The office handling the ESA award which is about to terminate will presumably be notified of the UC claim so that the termination can be actioned ... could that be seen as an indirect notification of an intention to claim HB?
I think this is a bit of a stretch if I’m honest. Much better if there was contact with the LA itself.
Where is the landlord in all of this? Given that it is supported housing, have they not identified the need to claim HB with the client?
Many thanks both.
The landlord is a community interest company hence the managed tenancy link to specified accomm. but don’t provide the support, so have no contact with the claimant. The care provider have not really done much as a separate point, but a mitigating factor is that the claimant doesn’t have capacity and is being dealt with by the LAs deputy and estates section.
To this end there is LA involvement HB anorak, albeit not with the Housing Benefit section…..
I have quite a few service-users who have to claim HB when making a claim for UC as they live in temporary homeless accommodation. When making the UC claim it asks if you have housing costs and what type. When you enter temporary homeless it automatically tells you to claim HB and says they will send a notification to HB. Several weeks later the service-user receives a letter from HB inviting them to make a claim by a certain date so that backdating can be made to the start date of the UC claim. Don’t know if this happens UK wide.
Jim
I have quite a few service-users who have to claim HB when making a claim for UC as they live in temporary homeless accommodation. When making the UC claim it asks if you have housing costs and what type. When you enter temporary homeless it automatically tells you to claim HB and says they will send a notification to HB. Several weeks later the service-user receives a letter from HB inviting them to make a claim by a certain date so that backdating can be made to the start date of the UC claim. Don’t know if this happens UK wide.
Jim
That’s interesting, wasn’t aware of that. I think it can count as the claimant indirectly notifying the local authority “by whatever means” of an intention to claim HB. Even if the claimant thought they were claiming a UC housing element, I think the HB reg is flexible enough to accommodate DWP saying “ah, no, what you actually need here is HB - don’t worry we’ll pass it on”.
Thanks again.
I have spoken to a colleague who processes claims and they are not aware of a similar system working as described by Jim where he is. They do sometimes receive notifications from DWP/UC but unless they already have a CTS claim or previous HB claim it will not have any affect or be recorded anywhere as such, and the notifications aren’t an equivalent of the LAID docs as per PC.
There is a difference between the LAID/LACI input docs and an intention to claim.
The input docs are forwarded to the Council when someone has already made a claim for HB at the DWP - you can do this if you are also making a claim for Pension Credit. (and used to be able to do it if you were also making a claim for legacy working age DWP benefit). In those cases, the contact with DWP is the HB claim, and the LAID/LACI is an administrative procedure.
What is being suggested in this case is that a message received from UC stands as the claimant notifying the LA designated office indirectly “by whatever means” that they need to claim HB. But perhaps it doesn’t happen routinely and might not have happened in the present case. DWP are usually extremely cautious with GDPR, to a fault some would say