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About Housing Benefit
Home > Services > Council and Government > Council Tax Benefit and Housing Benefit > About Housing Benefit
This page gives information on housing benefit, including who qualifies for it and how to claim it. You can find out how we assess how much housing benefit you are entitled to, how we pay it to you and how to make sure you still receive the correct amount of benefit if your circumstances change.
Here are some answers to common questions:
- What is housing benefit?
- What is Local Housing Allowance (LHA)?
- Do I qualify to claim housing benefit?
- I am a student – can I claim?
- I live with my family and pay them rent – can I claim?
- How do I claim housing benefit?
- How do you work out how much benefit I get?
- How will you pay my benefit?
- What do I do if my circumstances change?
Housing benefit helps people on low incomes with the cost of their rent. It is only available to tenants and not home owners. Both private tenants and local authority tenants can claim it.
The benefit awarded is intended to help with the cost of your rent, but not living costs such as food and heating. We can pay some or all of your rent, but we cannot meet all the service costs your landlord might charge.
There are two main types:
- Rent allowance: claim this if you are renting from a private landlord or housing association
- Rent rebate: claim this if you are renting from the council
What is Local Housing Allowance (LHA)?
From 7 April 2008 Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is the new name for Housing Benefit for tenants in privately rented accommodation. (See our separate page on Local Housing Allowance in the related content area on the right.)
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Do I qualify to claim housing benefit?
To claim, you must:
- live in the property you are claiming for
- be charged rent for it
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I am a student – can I claim?
Full-time students do not usually qualify for housing benefit, whether they are single or whether they are in a couple who are both students. The exceptions are if they or their partner is disabled, or if they have dependent children.
Non-student partners of students can claim.
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I live with my family and pay them rent – can I claim?
You are not entitled to housing benefit if you live with a close relative in the same household, even if they charge you rent.
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How do I claim housing benefit?
If you claim Income Support, Incapacity Benefit or Jobseeker’s Allowance, you can claim housing benefit at the same time. Your Jobcentre Plus office will forward us your claim form. We will contact you directly if we need further details.
If you don’t claim any of these benefits, you can pick up an application form from your local council office.
We can visit you at home if you are housebound or if you cannot come to our offices because you are infirm or disabled.
We do need to see some documents when you apply (to see the full list, use the link on this page) but you have up to a month after you make your claim to get them to us. We have to see original documents, not copies, and if you don’t show them to us we may not be able to pay you any benefit.
We will need the same proof for your partner, if you have one, and for any other adults living in your home.
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How do you work out how much benefit I get?
We assess housing benefit using rules set down by Parliament, taking the following factors into account:
- your household income, minus an amount of money called a ‘disregard’, which the Government says we should deduct
- savings held by you and your partner
- the personal circumstances of you and any other residents
- how much rent you pay
Find out more about each of these using the related content links.
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How will you pay my benefit?
We normally pay housing benefit from the Monday after we receive your claim. This is why it’s important that you claim as soon as you think you might be entitled to benefit.
If you are a council tenant your housing benefit is paid directly to your rent account each week. This reduces the amount of rent you have to pay.
If you are a housing association tenant, we normally send your benefit to your landlord, but we can pay it directly to you.
If you pay rent to a private landlord your benefit may be paid direct to you, or to your landlord if you agree, by cheque. Payment is made four-weekly in arrears.
In certain circumstances, for instance if you are more than eight weeks in arrears with your rent, the council will pay your housing benefit direct to your landlord unless it would not be in your interest to do so.
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What do I do if my circumstances change?
It’s very important you tell us about any changes in your circumstances – please let us know in writing within a month.
Changes that we need to know about include:
- changes in your wages or income
- anybody moving into or leaving your household
- changes in your rent
If you don’t let us know about changes like these, you may miss out on benefits you are entitled to, or we may end up overpaying you. If we find this has happened, you may have to pay the money back.
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