Housing Benefit where claimant doesnt have capacity

Hello guys,

Hoping for some advice here. A client moved from general needs housing into supported housing as he didn’t have capacity to manage independence. Housing Benefit wrote to him and asked him to update his details but obviously he didn’t reply, unaware of what to do.

It seems Social Services have the relevant authority to oversee his welfare and financial circumstances, but no-one seems to want to acknowledge this power. Therefore Housing Benefit are saying he didn’t respond to requests and the claim is closed, and obviously wont take a fresh claim because he doesn’t have capacity to gather the evidence needed to support it, and we cannot do so without authority to act , which he cannot give because he lacks capacity.

We are in a limbo situation where we cannot help him directly, and cannot get anyone in social services to give us the authority we need. We have asked that they check to see if any application was ever made to be granted appointee powers, but if Social Services didnt, and need to apply for it, this will take a prolonged period of time.

We cannot even get him exempted from Council Tax under SMI rules because we cannot speak to his GP without consent that the client cannot give.

Is there any other way around this issue?

A few questions:

- was this a change of address within the same LA area?
- if so, is it a single tier authority?
- if this involved a move into a different LA area, what kind of contact was made, when and by whom to the new LA on the subject of HB?  A claim form, email, phone call, anything?
- Is there a court-appointed deputy?  This is a different thing from being a benefits appointee, people often use the terms deputy and appointee interchangeably and it can cause situations like this.
- If there is a court-appointed deputy, is it the social services authority or someone else?
- If there is no deputy, is there a DWP benefits appointee?  That means someone appointed by DWP to claim (typically) UC and PIP.  That person should then also be the HB appointee, but they need to make themselves known.

What I would hope is that the move was in-authority and there has been a decision to terminate HB which was flawed in a million ways and can now be revised.