Affordable Rents and Housing Benefits

We have a new mixed tenure scheme, which is part affordable rent and part shared ownership in a retirement/sheltered scheme. On the scheme a wellbeing service is offered as well as a café style (no meals included) facility, the residents also pay the provider for their individual water use. 

For our shared owners these services are listed on their service charge breakdown and are therefore easily identified as ineligible for Housing Benefit. The rented residents however do not have a service charge breakdown as all charges are included within the affordable rent.

As it will be clear to the Housing Benefit department that these services are being provided (due to the shared owners breakdowns) we feel that it may be necessary to display the ineligible charges only for the rented residents so that they can be transparent with Housing benefit. We are able to do this however the costings will only be able to be inflated by the same percentage as the affordable rent in future years which may make the costs inaccurate over time.

I would be interested in anyone’s experience with ineligible services on affordable rent schemes and how they have dealt with Housing Benefit claims.