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Forum Home  →  Discussion  →  Universal credit administration  →  Thread

Late APA housing costs payments

Timothy Seaside
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Housing services - Arun District Council

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I’ve seen two tenants in the past week who claimed UC in the first half of August. Both of them are simple claims and I am assured we responded immediately to the DWP requests for information about their tenancies. We received our first monthly rent payment for both of them yesterday - 17 October. So instead of being a month in arrears - which we were expecting but obviously not thrilled about - they are nine and ten weeks in arrears. As a social landlord we have to just kind of suck it up (another instance of passing the national debt down to local authorities - localism?). I’ve also heard from one of our rent arrears officers about UC claimants being told that the DWP have paid their rent, when we have received nothing (three cases of this in the last week).

In my experience, there are many private landlords out there who can’t afford to run with that sort of static arrear - particularly the buy-to-let brigade.

Even for social landlords, a static arrear like that is putting tenants in a perilous situation - because by the time we realise there’s a problem, they are already two months down (assuming they didn’t already have arrears). Again, as a council, this doesn’t necessarily mean we would be serving notice, but I know that some housing associations are much more inclined to use the two months arrears mandatory possession ground (which was virtually unthinkable when I was doing housing possession defence - before the money ran out and I had to come over to the dark side).

I wonder if anybody has clients in private rented housing with APAs - are the delays as bad there? I don’t think I’ve had a PRS UC APA client yet.

Nan
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Generalist team - Hammersmith & Fulham CAB

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Not super helpful to you, but we have realised that the way APA is paid in ‘batches’ to the landlord is a real problem. It means it cannot be resolved unless the client agrees to get paid the housing costs directly i.e. remove the APA. I recently had a client who receives his money on the 9th of the month and the APA leaves the UC account on the 2nd of the month. So having claimed in August, his housing costs for then were only just paid in early/mid October. 

Pretty grim, and hard to see a practical solution.

HB Anorak
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All I can say is that static arrear is a good term for this, better than Neil Couling’s “book arrears” and my own “structural arrears”.

Peter Turville
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It would be very helpful to all concerned if DWP made it clear to landlords - particularly social landlords with a large number of APA’s when they will actually receive UC HC payments. I’m sure that they quite quickly get to know what their APA payment cycle is and therefore how far ‘in arrears’ the period the payment relates to for each claimant / tenant is. Although it may be that landlords also receive ad hoc payments outside of their usual bulk payment?

But why can’t DWP also notify the claimant when the HC deduction which shows on their payment statement has actually been paid to their landlord?

It cannot be beyond the wit of the DWP to include an entry “the HC deducted from your payment for the assessment period A-B of £X was paid to your landlord on C date. That way all concerned would have clear information and would save so much grief regarding ‘delayed’ APA payments and tenants being issued with rent arrears letters etc!

Timothy Seaside
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Housing services - Arun District Council

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Peter Turville - 18 October 2018 02:42 PM

It would be very helpful to all concerned if DWP made it clear to landlords - particularly social landlords with a large number of APA’s when they will actually receive UC HC payments. I’m sure that they quite quickly get to know what their APA payment cycle is and therefore how far ‘in arrears’ the period the payment relates to for each claimant / tenant is. Although it may be that landlords also receive ad hoc payments outside of their usual bulk payment?

But why can’t DWP also notify the claimant when the HC deduction which shows on their payment statement has actually been paid to their landlord?

It cannot be beyond the wit of the DWP to include an entry “the HC deducted from your payment for the assessment period A-B of £X was paid to your landlord on C date. That way all concerned would have clear information and would save so much grief regarding ‘delayed’ APA payments and tenants being issued with rent arrears letters etc!

Ha ha. I’m afraid you must have written that without applying a DWP filter. I’m fairly certain they’re not going to start doing things because “it would be very helpful”. And I’m afraid you’re on fairly shaky ground when you start saying anything “cannot be beyond the wit of the DWP” - most of the available evidence suggests that the DWP’s wit is quite severely restricted. N.B. I’m talking about the organisation as a whole - there are lots of very good, capable people working in the DWP and Jobcentres.

Our area went to full service at the start of July. Up until this week we were starting to get worried about the absence of APA payments. Now we’ve suddenly received a load of them, but it seems most of them are being paid a month or more late. We don’t get any sort of notification from them - so we have no idea when we will be paid. Contrast that with HB - where any landlord being paid direct would be kept fully informed of what was going on and when (and how much) they would be paid.

Our tenants have been telling us that when they call the DWP or raise it through their journal, they are told we have been paid and there is nothing to worry about. This has been going on for several weeks. As I said above, this is going to cause some private landlords real difficulty - some struggle even with four weekly HB paid in arrears (on time) so UC will be a real challenge. I am worried.

[ Edited: 19 Oct 2018 at 10:53 am by Timothy Seaside ]
Andyp5 Citizens Advice Bridport & District
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Timothy Seaside - 19 October 2018 10:49 AM
Peter Turville - 18 October 2018 02:42 PM

It would be very helpful to all concerned if DWP made it clear to landlords - particularly social landlords with a large number of APA’s when they will actually receive UC HC payments. I’m sure that they quite quickly get to know what their APA payment cycle is and therefore how far ‘in arrears’ the period the payment relates to for each claimant / tenant is. Although it may be that landlords also receive ad hoc payments outside of their usual bulk payment?

But why can’t DWP also notify the claimant when the HC deduction which shows on their payment statement has actually been paid to their landlord?

It cannot be beyond the wit of the DWP to include an entry “the HC deducted from your payment for the assessment period A-B of £X was paid to your landlord on C date. That way all concerned would have clear information and would save so much grief regarding ‘delayed’ APA payments and tenants being issued with rent arrears letters etc!

Ha ha. I’m afraid you must have written that without applying a DWP filter. I’m fairly certain they’re not going to start doing things because “it would be very helpful”. And I’m afraid you’re on fairly shaky ground when you start saying anything “cannot be beyond the wit of the DWP” - most of the available evidence suggests that the DWP’s wit is quite severely restricted. N.B. I’m talking about the organisation as a whole - there are lots of very good, capable people working in the DWP and Jobcentres.

Our area went to full service at the start of July. Up until this week we were starting to get worried about the absence of APA payments. Now we’ve suddenly received a load of them, but it seems most of them are being paid a month or more late. We don’t get any sort of notification from them - so we have no idea when we will be paid. Contrast that with HB - where any landlord being paid direct would be kept fully informed of what was going on and when (and how much) they would be paid.

Our tenants have been telling us that when they call the DWP or raise it through their journal, they are told we have been paid and there is nothing to worry about. This has been going on for several weeks. As I said above, this is going to cause some private landlords real difficulty - some struggle even with four weekly HB paid in arrears (on time) so UC will be a real challenge. I am worried.

We have had UC since 6th December 2017 (a date imprinted on my mind), a lot of the above mirrors our client’s experiences.

The info on the journal i.e. the date the APA is recorded as being paid bears no relation to the rent account.

To the extent they can be so wildly out of kilter, in one case it was impossible to even make an educated guess which payment recorded on the rent account, was for a given assessment period.

Direct deductions to RSL for rent arrears can be like groundhog day, they stop for no apparent reason, we help client get them reinstated, client comes back and…...........................meanwhile RSL contact client re rent arrears and….................

Tim this may be of interest from CPAG, equally applicable to Cabbies too etc see link below

Information and anonymous case studies are being collected from:
Frontline workers including: welfare rights workers, housing officers and Early Years staff. Frontline workers submit evidence using our EWS reporting form - https://childpovertyactiongroup.wufoo.com/forms/m1vc0zeg1sr9zgh/

 

Timothy Seaside
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Housing services - Arun District Council

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Thanks, Andy.

We’re escalating it through our DWP contacts - it’s going to make a huge hole in our accounts if it stays like this. But I’ve added my experience to the CPAG EWS as well.

I ought to correct my previous post; I said we don’t receive any notification at all about payments, but apparently we did receive a notification with the payments to clarify what we were receiving (rent account references, amounts, etc). But that does mean we’re still completely in the dark about payments until we receive them. And it doesn’t change the fact that the DWP are telling our tenants we’ve been paid when we haven’t - which is not going to be good for tenancy relations in PRS.

Rehousing Advice.
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Homeless Unit - Southampton City Council

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Hi Tim

You might want to consider whether APAs are still the correct way to go.  Your experiences which mirror others, might suggest that the administration of APA under UC is incompatible with good rent collection, that is until a case hits 8 weeks arrears. 

Peter Turville
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Timothy Seaside - 19 October 2018 10:49 AM

Ha ha. I’m afraid you must have written that without applying a DWP filter. I’m fairly certain they’re not going to start doing things because “it would be very helpful”. And I’m afraid you’re on fairly shaky ground when you start saying anything “cannot be beyond the wit of the DWP” - most of the available evidence suggests that the DWP’s wit is quite severely restricted. N.B. I’m talking about the organisation as a whole - there are lots of very good, capable people working in the DWP and Jobcentres.

I comment merely in hope (or frustration) rather than expectation. After 3 decades+ in this business I have yet to see a pig fly!!).

Timothy Seaside
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Housing services - Arun District Council

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Thanks, Martin. I can see the strength of that argument. But we only ask for APA where there are significant arrears (usually a lot more than two months), and I only suggest them to tenants / clients where there is some sort of vulnerability, addiction, etc. So I suppose we’re taking a pragmatic view, but that doesn’t excuse the DWP - something needs to change.

Peter - I did sense an air of frustration and weariness in your post. I saw it as an old-style comedy opportunity - you set it up, I knock it down. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve only been in this business for about ten years, but I suspect anybody who’s been doing it more than a few months will have developed a very deep cynicism (and often a pleasantly dark and dry sense of humour).

Elliot Kent
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Our solicitors have shown me some really bizarre rent accounts. Aside from just the general lag between the date that the DWP say they made the payment and the date the rent is actually paid (Sarah Batty gave a great talk on how this works this a few months ago) there are plenty of cases where (say) no rent gets paid for a month and then suddenly they get two months rent paid down the line and various other assorted nonsense.