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private rented rent includes meals

CHC
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Welfare rights team - St Mungo's Broadway

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Joined: 22 June 2010

My client is renting a room from his ex wife. They were divorced many years ago. He doesn’t have a written agreement but he pays her £100 a week and his rent includes his meals, he does not have to pay anything extra towards bills .  He started renting the room in 2019 and was paying for this from his work wages, he claimed UC end of August 2020 when he lost his job. They did not award housing costs as he did not provide proof of rent.

I am looking to see if housing costs could cover the rent. Although the amount of rent paid is low I don’t think this will be considered a contrived tenancy as the arrangement started before he claimed Universal Credit and therefore should not be seen as having been set up to take advantage of the UC system.

Although he does not have a formal written agreement his ex-wife if happy to write a letter stating that she is charging him rent for the room, how much the rent is and when this arrangement started.  Should this be sufficient as proof of liability?

I am aware that normally the amount awarded with be based on the LHA rate and can include utilities etc as long as they are included in the rent, does this also include where meals are included?  Does the letter his ex-wife writes have to specify that utilities bills and food are included in the rent or does it not matter?

Elliot Kent
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Shelter

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The fact that the rent includes meals is not relevant to the amount which would be paid, it is still just LHA.

Contrivance is not the problem in this case, neither is the lack of a written agreement per se. The problem is that UC are unlikely to be persuaded that this is a commercial liability as per reg 25(3) UC regs. Renting from an ex-wife, the absence of a written agreement, the low rent and the fact that meals are included are all factors which are going to be pointed towards as indicating that there is no genuine commercial relationship.

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

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I endorse everything Elliot says (not that he needs my endorsement) and I would add one more thing: if there is an audit trail of the payments he made before claiming UC, or even during, such as regular debits on his bank statement, that will go some way towards establishing commerciality.  If it’s always cash with no documentary evidence, that’s another nail in the con-commercial coffin.