Good morning, One of my Housing Association clients recently received a £14,000 housing benefit overpayment demand. I was asked to intervene, and after one e-mail, the council accepted my clients should never have been invoiced in the first place. However, they then turned their attention to the tenant, a 55…

Good morning, DWP plan to press ahead with its “digital system” roll-out from May 2016 with 50 new Jobcentre areas per month being added from January 2017. The digital system removes the “gateway” conditions which have so far limited claims (225,000) to mainly single claimants, so the number and type…

Good morning, I recently responded to a question, posed by a website member on our “discussion forum”, which concerns the amount of “Third Party Deductions” (TPDs) that can be deducted in respect of rent arrears and whether, in cases of multiple deductions, where there exists related concerns over tenant hardship…

Good afternoon, The “Independent” ran an article the other day “The Government’s Universal Credit welfare reform has serious flaws” http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/universal-credit-welfare-reform-has-serious-flaws-a7011206.html, which attracted considerable social media attention and comment. It’s perhaps unsurprising, given it highlighted the individual and mass effect of HMG, through George Osborne, reducing and withdrawing “work allowances” especially for…

Good morning, A number of housing association & private members have contacted me, extremely concerned about the potential impact on revenues, created by the series of planned changes to Housing Benefit and Universal Credit, announced in the Chancellor’s summer & autumn budgets. Although, in many instances, we’re still awaiting much…

Good morning, You’ll recall I wrote to you on 30th November to highlight George Osborne’s Autumn Statement announcement to Parliament which included: “Capping Housing Benefit in the social rented sector – The government will apply the relevant Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates as maxima for Housing Benefit paid in the…

Good morning, Our 30th July bulletin http://universalcreditadvice.com/housing-associations/2016/07/universal-credit—how-to-pursue-queries-complaints explained how you could raise queries and make complaints to DWP, concerning Universal Credit administration processes, where problems of delays or non-payment of Landlord Managed Payments (LMPs) or Third Party Payments (collectively known as APAs) occur. We continue to press DWP hierarchy to…

Good morning, DWP has recently produced a revised version of its Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) Guidance Manual, which includes a Good Practice section and can be found here. The latest version reflects guidance which is designed to address the likely impact of the summer & autumn benefit changes, proposed by…

Good morning, You may recall, I wrote to you initially in November 2015, following the Chancellor’s autumn statement, which, amongst other things, raised the prospect of social landlord tenancy charges being restricted to Local Housing Allowance rates for all new tenancies created from April 2016 – effective from 2018. The…

Good morning, One of the most common questions I’m asked when doing our training sessions http://universalcreditadvice.com/housing-associations/training is – how will claimants exist with no money between their last payment of legacy benefits until Universal Credit’s first payment kicks in 5/6 weeks later? The answer lies in what are known as…