Good morning

Our clients at Albyn Housing Association have demonstrated, for the 2nd time in recent months, the importance of assisting tenants to maximise entitlement to housing costs. Details of the earlier case can be found here

On this occasion, a Housing Officer (HO) assisted a tenant in claiming a backdated housing costs payment, resulting in a £900 payment. When applied to her account, this payment wiped out rent arrears accrued due to her failure to notify the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) of the annual rental charge increase, each year from April 2019.

The officer’s initial approach resulted in a one-year backdate, which pleased her. But she recalled me saying, in a recent in-house training session, that existing claims can be backdated without limit when the cause of the underpayment was a failure on the part of DWP to act on information provided by the landlord. In this case, although the tenant had not reported the change via her journal, despite prompts to do so, the Association had reported the change via the SRS portal each year. However, the DWP chose to ignore this because of its Policy Unit’s insistence that only tenants could effect changes —a mistaken belief that has resulted in unnecessary rental loss.

When DWP didn’t react to her further request, she asked for my assistance. I wrote to DWP’s management seeking a “revised” award, back to April 2019, on the strength of the evidence extracted from the portal. After months of dithering, I threatened to pursue an appeal, on behalf of the tenant, to force the Decision-Maker’s hand. This worked, almost immediately, securing a successful outcome for both tenant and landlord.

As members know, this issue has been around for years, affecting thousands of vulnerable tenants throughout GB. Before the April 2019 uprating, I issued a members’ bulletin, highlighting how DWP was failing to comply with the law and its guidance, causing unnecessary losses to both tenants and landlords. Sadly, these same erroneous practices remain, and are especially harsh on PRS, Voluntary, and Charitable landlord organisations, and tenants. The good news is, with a bit of know-how, success can be achieved.

I am also pleased to say, things are steadily improving from a DWP standpoint. From April 2023, social landlords can update the annual rental increase using the portal. The landlord can also correct mistakes made by the tenant, e.g., they report incorrect housing cost charges or payment frequency, again via the landlord portal. Nowadays, DWP encourages landlords to update their property files in advance of the rent increase date. That way, once claimants declare their housing costs and pass through ID verification, their case links to the landlord portal, enabling the landlord to verify housing costs.

Unfortunately, private tenants (PRS) have no portal, so they are at a disadvantage. Applications for Direct Payments are made online, with no certainty of payment. Reporting changes is difficult, as no facility exists that permits notification to a dedicated team or email address. I advise my clients to report changes, like a tenant leaving, rent increase, via correspondence@dwp.gov.uk or contactus@dwp.gov.uk. When repeated problems arise with Direct payment requests, overpayments, etc., I recommend emailing the nearest Partnership Manager  

If you require any further information on this or any other HB/UC topic, are looking for training or advocacy to challenge poor DWP decisions, please get in touch bill@ucadvice.co.uk or phone 07733 080 389

Regards

Bill Irvine

UC Advice & Advocacy Ltd

www.ucadvice.co.uk