Universal Credit Portal

Hi

Is anyone able to shed any light on the changes to the landlord portal.

We as a landlord are having difficulties requesting managed payments and arrears direct.
The portal now shows the change below - but no other explanation.

20 September 2023
Alternative Payment Arrangements (APA) and deduction requests
The ‘Request alternative payment arrangement or rent arrears deduction’ option has been removed from the Tenancy Action screen. It will appear when the housing details have been accepted by the tenant. You can then make the request.

What appears on the tenants journal, what happens if they dont accept the details. We will not able to request managed payments???

TIA

It seems to me that if the details you provide match those given by your tenant then you should be able to apply for APA straight away. There should only be a delay if there’s a discrepancy; then the tenant is asked whether they want to accept the landlord’s version or resubmit their housing details. If they accept the landlord’s version then you should be able to apply, and if they don’t then you’ll have a new verification to do anyway.

I don’t think this makes much difference in practice (except that you might have to diarise going back to apply for APA later) because if the housing costs aren’t approved then they’re not going to set up an APA anyway, and the tenant is going to disappear from your portal.

Latest update on the portal:

1 November 2023
Alternative Payment Arrangements (APA) and deduction requests
When the tenancy details supplied by the landlord and tenant do not match, the option to ‘Request alternative payment arrangement or rent arrears deduction’ is removed from the Tenancy Action screen.

The option to request an APA or deduction will appear when the tenant has accepted the housing details provided by the landlord. On average this takes 3 days, but it may take longer.

Thank you for the update.
I had escalated it and recieved a reply this week with more information.
Im glad they have updated it with a clearer explanation

One good thing about this is that it gives us a way of seeing whether the tenant has provided the correct tenancy information for their claim (assuming we have got it right our end) - which means we can flag them up for help if it doesn’t get resolved quickly.

As an aside, please may I ask what happens when (for example) rent arrears are cleared? Does the claimant have to contact UC to tell them to stop collecting the debt or should the landlord do this via the portal?

I think it’s clear that the landlord should be asking UC to stop third party deductions when arrears are paid off, but there is no mechanism for this on the landlord portal. The only thing we can do is contact UC through other channels. Generally we use our email contacts at the service centre but it is a bit hit-and-miss. We would always recommend our tenants contact UC themselves as well.

Timothy Seaside - 13 November 2023 12:37 PM

I think it’s clear that the landlord should be asking UC to stop third party deductions when arrears are paid off, but there is no mechanism for this on the landlord portal. The only thing we can do is contact UC through other channels. Generally we use our email contacts at the service centre but it is a bit hit-and-miss. We would always recommend our tenants contact UC themselves as well.

Thank you, Timothy, that’s really helpful information.