HB entitlement for 2 claimants sharing a room…

As a depressing indicator of the state of the Housing Market in London we are aware of landlords offering shared rooms (in shared houses) to non related tenants who are not couples, what would be the LHA rate each individual would be entitled to.. assuming full financial entitlement to HB?

I would assume you couldnt have 2 seperate claims for the same bit of exclusive possession.. unless you partitioned the room and gave them different room numbers.. but I cant find anything which confirms this.. any help gratefully received.

Many thanks.

In housing law two people cannot have exclusive possession of the same piece of land at the same time unless under a joint tenancy.  Whatever else it is, a tenancy is a slice of time.  If the occupants have separate agreements with the landlord in such circumstances they are likely to be licensees.  I see no reason why there cannot be two claims for HB on the basis of a license to occupy provided the agreements were legally sound and the two claims combined didn’t exceed the going rate for the room let to a single occupant.

I presume the LHA rate would be the shared room rate.

Thank you very much, thats really helpful.

So the going rate could be above the LHA for a 1 bed as long as it wasnt excessively over that or would it be pegged to the LHA 1 bed rate?

Thanks again

The going rate is the market rate.  Market rates are often subject to fluctuation, so there is room for a little leeway (the intention must not be to abuse the HB scheme).  If the rent is above the LHA rate then, of course, HB is capped at the LHA rate.

Thank you for that, really helpful.

It is a concern that the implications of this could mean it is more lucrative for a landlord to offer a single room as a sharing arrangement to 2 people on shared room rate than it is to offer it to 1 person who is entitled to the 1 bed LHA rate.. so this may become more common.

There are large parts of London where the one bed LHA is more than double the shared rate.  But if these are rooms in shared houses we are talking about a sole occupier would still only get the shared rate unless s/he is a care leaver under 22 or has the severe disability premium.

The crazy and broken London rental market invites all kinds of creative household combinations to maximise HB entitlement.  It’s impossible to know what the market would really support without HB, but I find it hard to accept that, for example, a three-bed ex Council flat on a certain notorious Inner London estate would attract £500 a week from a self-funding tenant, but because the government will pay that much in HB subsidy to the Council for a homeless temp acc placement it becomes the market rent.  Absolutely ludicrous.

Anyway, in a case of two people sharing a room and being charged the shared accommodation LHA rate each, the Council is likely to invoke Reg 12B(6) and limit the eligible rent for HB to no more than the single shared rate between the pair of them, or maybe a bit more if it’s a nice room.  It is sometimes suggested that Reg 12B(6) is not properly connected to Reg 13D and there is some force in that argument as can be seen from the obiter para 40 of 2011 UKUT 156 AAC; but until the UT definitively pronounces on the issue I would personally seek to rely on Reg 12B(6) in these circumstances.  Like the landlord is going to evict them and get a self-funding tenant or tenants to pay twice the shared LHA rate for that room ... yeah, right.  To put this into context for RN members outside London, the shared accommodation rate for Central London is £131.27, so if you charge two people that amount each for the same room you are raking in over £260 a week for a room in a shared house.  There is no way that is a true market rent - without HB to support silly amounts like that it would all collapse.

private landlords…....the real benefit scroungers!