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reclassifing homes
Does anyone know the legal implications for Housing Associations re classifing homes from 3 bedroom to 2 bedroom etc to help tenants who may be affected by the bedroom tax, theres an articule in inside housing regarding Knowsley Housing Trust doing this. Somewhere in the back of my mind i thought this would not be allowed. Any one know if this is possible.
thanks
Afraid that I can’t answer your question, but there is a live online Q&A hosted by the Guardian today, between 12-2pm, so you might be able to seek some views of their experts on this issue?
Live discussion: managing the bedroom tax for social housing tenants
Amongst the blurb, it says (my emphasis):
The changes will affect housing associations and councils as well as tenants. Many housing providers fear a rise in rent arrears will put millions of pounds of income at risk and have been looking at ways to manage the bedroom tax. A number of neighbouring housing associations and local authorities have pooled their housing stock to relocate under-occupying tenants to avoid the tax. Other providers have reclassfied larger homes as smaller properties to beat the penalty, while some have even toyed with lowering rents to make up for the housing benefit shortfall.
so I would imagine it will be one of the talking points (there is already a lively discussion taking place in the comments section).
Posted your question, replies include:
I haven’t heard that it is illegal but I know from looking at this internally that they would need approval (i would expect) from their lenders so prehaps KHT have already had the appropriate approvals including legal advice.
However i’d be interested to hear anything on the contary to this….
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I don’t know the specific legal position but this could run into probelms. If a family who needs a 3 bed property, will they not be given access to a property reclassed as 2 bed?
What will they be charging for the reclassified 2 bed property. You could havve two households with the same make-up in the same type of property next door to each other paying different amounts of rent.
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Thinking again, though I commend KHT, the room count for each property must have to match their insurance policies for properites, this could be a prooblem.
What is a bedroom? Here is a legal opinion (sent to an advice agency) on questions relative to the imminent introduction of new underoccupancy provisions by the Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2012, Worth looking at…...
Hopefully there are no social landlords out there who still think that simply lowering rents will work. If the property still has too many bedrooms for the household in it, that 14/25% is still coming off, now matter how low the rent is.
I might be going off on a tangent but is there not a danger that some LAs will use reg 9 of the HB Regs and deem any reclassification as done to take advantage of the housing benefit scheme?
I believe that whether a home is ‘reclassified’ by the landlord is something of a misconception, as the counsel’s opinion above seems to confirm.
The real question is not what is the landlord’s description of the home, but the factual question of how many bedrooms it actually contains. As bedroom is not defined, whether a room is a bedroom is a factual question for the council (and thereafter a tribunal) to decide based on its current usage. The landlord’s description of the room at the start of the tenancy may carry some evidential weight towards deciding this, but there is nothing in the current regulations that makes this description conclusive.
One more reply from the Guardian Q&A yesterday, from Affinity Sutton:
I don’t know any more about the KHT plans other than what I’ve read on here/Inside Housing, but what I have seen raises lots of questions for me.
We looked at the issue of reclassifying rooms and although it perhaps looks appealing in theory as soon as we started thinking through the implications the idea started to unravel - many issue have already been raised (income, loan covenants, insurance, future allocations, maintaining consistancy between identical properties with different levels of occupation, etc!)
On the issue of contrivance, the question is whether the liability was created to take advantage, etc. So, does a change in description of a new room create a new liability? I would have thought that unless there is a significant or substantial change to the terms and conditions of the tenancy agreement, then probably not.
On the issue of contrivance, the question is whether the liability was created to take advantage, etc. So, does a change in description of a new room create a new liability? I would have thought that unless there is a significant or substantial change to the terms and conditions of the tenancy agreement, then probably not.
To the untrained eye a number of private landlords appear to have reclassified a number of 1’s to 2’s 2’s to 3’s 3’s to 4’s to take advantage of LHA…..by err dividing bedrooms, converting living rooms.
Maybe I am mistaken?
Don’t think it is a question of contrivance but instead a finding of fact (I agree with MrFinch on this point)
I can see that there *could* instead be a question of fraud in a case where a claimant deliberately misrepresents what is clearly a bedroom as another room in an attempt to obtain more benefit than they should be entitled to, but I don’t think that is the type of situation that is being discussed here.