Preventing homelessness: landlords delivering welfare rights
Housing Benefit and rent arrears
Here are some of the common problems in Housing Benefit (HB) that can lead to rent arrears:
- Completed claim forms going missing after posting or delivering to the Council.
- Tenants not receiving benefit review forms.
- Complexity of forms leading to beneficial information being missed out.
- Incorrect advice leading to failure to claim.
- Claims being closed down for tenant's failure to provide 'original proof of income' (often where the proof in question is either not legally required or could easily be obtained directly by the Council).
- Changes in circumstances leading to unexpected reduction in HB.
- Incorrect application of non-dependant deductions.
In all of the above cases, with welfare rights support, the pursuit of an application or appeal to its final conclusion will very often result in the restoration of full benefit entitlement, thus eliminating or substantially reducing rent arrears. This is based on the QXHA Welfare Rights team's many years of direct experience in dealing with these types of problem.
