Notice to landlords

just an FYI - as this has been issued to landlords today

anyone currently on LIVE service - being migrated across will need their Landlords to verify their housing costs again
however I am currently seeing significant delays in this coming through on the landlord portal in full service areas already and service centre/JCP are insisting that its been sent so housing costs are being delayed because customers are being told that DWP are waiting on Landlord verification - when we haven’t even received it!
is anyone else seeing this happening?

I wonder if any one could help me.  Council has received HB stop notification from the DWP for a tenant who resides in a Housing Association so ended her HB entitlement as she was moving onto UC.

She has gone back to HB stating that the DWP won’t consider the Housing Element of her claim because the Council sent them an RSR (or SRS) form to advising the client is in supported accommodation, which she is not.

Do you have any idea who could sends these forms? Apparently HB need to send the correct form but I have no idea what form they need/want.

Can any of you shed some light on this?

Thanks a lot for your consideration.

We sent a Freedom of Information Request asking about the procedure for ensuring that the correct benefit pays for housing costs depending on whether it’s specified accommodation or not.
It was confirmed it was the HB office who sends the info to DWP for UC to act accordingly (they referred to HB circular A8/2014) and they supplied some internal guidance (attached) , which refers to a form UC321.
Hope it helps.

in my experience these albeit ‘human error’ mistakes can be quite costly
they cause delays with the payment of housing costs and in some cases the payments are not backdated - or you at least have a hard job convincing the DWP that they still owe the claimant the money - so just be prepared !
if an SRS form is incorrectly completed then DWP have to send out a new one to the Landlord - and this is where the delays occur because they don’t always automatically do it even when they categorically say that they have - so I would keep my eye on this and keep checking with the Landlord/Local Authority

Hi,

I wonder if you can shed any light on a similar situation for me.

We have a client who rents from the local authority and declared housing costs late (into the third assessment period before these were declared due to a misunderstanding on her part - so we have advised that she will not get any Housing Costs for the first assessment period). 

The issue we now have is that she has now received her statement for her UC payment for this (3rd) assessment period and it still does not include her Housing Costs.  As far I can tell from her (and I’ve not seen her journal) it appears that her Housing Costs have not been verified yet, and sounds like this may be due to how she has worded the name of her landlord when she declared these. 

I’ve had a look at the regs and at the Advice for Decision makers and I’m struggling to decipher if her Housing Costs, once verified, will be backdated and paid for her third assessment period or only be payable from the assessment period in which UC have been able to verify them.

Any info would be much appreciated!

Thanks :)

If she declared the housing costs in the third assessment period they should be included from then even if they can’t be paid straight away due to a delay in verification. It might be worth seeing if they can be paid earlier - information in relation to a claim must be supplied within one month or such longer period as Secretary of State considers reasonable - so there is scope for discretion if she misunderstood and supplied late (reg 37(3) of the UC etc (claims and payments) Regs)

I might be misreading the info in your query, but she has another option if she just claimed UC around 3 months ago but didn’t report her Housing Costs when she made her claim. This is that she can seek an ‘any grounds’ revision of the initial decision awarding UC. Given it’s ‘any grounds’ this can be used to correct the initial mistake in not notifying of the rental liability. If the late revision request isn’t accepted, that decision can then be appealed and the appeal should be successful

Good point - I should have thought of that option! ;)