Housing and Council Tax Benefits
Information for Landlords
We aim to work with you to ensure that you receive the money and service that you expect, and to ensure that overpayments are minimised. If difficult situations arise, such as when a tenant falls into substantial arrears, we will do everything we can to work with you to protect your income.
In return, we expect you to respect our obligations towards claimants and the confidentiality of the records and information that we hold. We are obliged to adhere to the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act, and will usually be unable to assist landlords who request personal information about their tenants.
If you are unfamiliar with Housing Benefit, you should read through the information pages on this website. There are many rules which may limit the amount of benefit that we can pay. This may mean that a tenant will not receive enough benefit to pay their rent in full. You should pay particular attention to the information on the page How Much Benefit Will I Get?
Direct Payments to Landlords
From 7 April 2008 under the new Local Housing Allowance scheme that has been introduced by Government, when a tenant applies for Housing Benefit payment may only be made direct to them unless it is considered that the claimant is ‘vulnerable’ and incapable of managing their financial affairs, is unlikely to pay their rent or has accrued 8 weeks rent arrears.
Fareham's Benefits service has devised a Vulnerability and Direct Payments Policy and Procedure (202 Kb) 
for tenants, landlords and third parties to use to minimise the risk of tenants falling into rent arrears and being put at risk of eviction and to reassure landlords that safeguards are also in place for them. This document also details the procedures that the Benefits Service will follow when making a decision of who Housing Benefit should be made to, how the affected parties will be notified of this decision and what procedures will be used when reviewing a decision.
The Government hopes that paying Housing Benefit to claimants will promote personal responsibility and empower them to budget for themselves; that it will help the unemployed to develop the skills they will need when they move into paid work; and that it will encourage them to open bank accounts and pay their rent by standing order or direct debit, thereby helping to promote financial inclusion.
It is very important that your contact details are kept up-to-date so that we can make you aware of any changes as soon as possible.
We have developed a document to cover some frequently asked questions which you may find helpful. Local Housing Allowance - Your Questions Answered (162 Kb) .
Any direct payment made to a landlord will be paid every 4 weeks in arrears.
We prefer to make payments direct to your bank account (BACS) and this method of payment can provide many advantages:
- Payment is direct to you and therefore eliminates the possibility of payments being delayed or lost in the post
- The payment is treated as cleared funds allowing you earlier access to the money
- Also saves you time and trouble paying the benefit cheques into your bank account and the payment is now automatically transferred
Further more, you will also receive a
remittance advice and a statement to confirm that the payment has been transferred,
enabling you to monitor the benefit payments being received. The remittance advise can automatically be sent to you via email or fax if you require. Please download the Bacs Request Form (158 Kb)
and return it to this office. Alternatively you can contact us and we will send you a form.
The new scheme will apply to claimants in the private sector and mainstream private tenancies only. The following types of tenancy will be exempt from this new scheme:
- Housing Association tenancies
- Protected cases, such as supported housing provided by certain local authorities, social landlords, charities and voluntary organisations
- Tenancies which commenced prior to January 1989
- Caravans, houseboats and hostels
- Tenancies where part of the rent is attributable to board and attendance
Claimants renting within these sectors will continue to receive Housing Benefit calculated under existing rules.
Electronic Landlord Payment Schedules
We have now devised a way of landlords being able access details of Housing Benefit payments in a quicker and more secure way. We have set up a secure website whereby landlords can log on (using their landlord reference and a password) and view the details of all payments that have been made to them in the last 2 years together with the breakdown of that payment.
The intention of this website is to enable landlords to obtain payment information as soon as the payment has been made rather than waiting for the paper schedule to be sent. Also it will enable you to view past information without having to request it and then wait for the information to be sent in the post.
We have now improved this service, whereby landlords who have signed up to the site can opt to not receive the landlord schedules in the paper form. This can be done by logging onto their account and selecting the Choose Schedule Receipt Method button. They will also receive an email notification to advise them that their account has been updated and by logging onto the site, they can view that information immediately. They will also receive the BACS remittance advice by email (instead of by post).
To subscribe to this service, all you need to do is provide a valid email address for the notifications to be issued to. Once this has been received, an account will be set up for you and you will receive an email notification of your user name and password (which you can then change). You can do this by submitting your details through the Landlord Schedule website, or sending an email to bensystem@fareham.gov.uk advising you would like to use the service. For either method, you will need to supply your unique Landlord Reference number.
If you have any queries on this service or have any problems using it, please email bensystem@fareham.gov.uk or call the Systems Team on 01329 824629 / 01329 824618.
Tenants With Substantial Arrears
If you can provide us with evidence that your tenant is more than 8 weeks in arrears with their full rent payments, you can contact us to arrange to consider having future benefit payments paid direct to you and to decide if your tenant should be classed as 'vulnerable'. We will not be able to pay you for any of the arrears if payments have already been sent to your tenant, and you will have to resolve the collection of these arrears yourself. However, we will try to ensure that any future sums are paid directly to you to ensure that the arrears do not get any larger.
Overpayments
Sometimes when we pay Housing Benefit and the claimant's details change, we may end up making an overpayment which we will ask the claimant to repay. The effects of the overpayment get more serious if the claimant fails to inform us of the change of details for a long period of time.
Claimants are given clear instructions when they apply for Housing Benefit that they must inform us immediately if there are any changes of circumstances. However, despite this, claimants often neglect or forget to inform us, and overpayments frequently occur.
If we have made payments directly to you and these were incorrect because of information that you failed to provide, we may require you to repay the overpayments to us. You should then treat the repaid sum as rent arrears, and deal with the recovery of these arrears by the most appropriate method.
If you fail to repay an overpayment which we have demanded, we may recover the overpayment from future direct payments of benefit. We are reluctant to recover payments in this way, but will not hesitate to do so if we feel that there is no alternative.
If we invoke these powers (Social Security Administration Act 1997 Section 16), it means that each tenant for whom Housing Benefit is being paid will have their direct payment reduced by the amount of the overpayments we are collecting. You must reduce each of these tenant's rent liability by the full value of their Housing Benefit entitlement, and you cannot recover the reduction by treating them as rent arrears.
Landlord Survey
A consultation of our Landlords was undertaken during 2006. Survey forms were issued offering our landlords the opportunity to give us their views on the quality of service we provide.
A number of those landlords who responded to this survey expressed an interest in receiving more information from us in the form of a newsletter. We responded to this by ensuring we provide a newsletter twice a year, which is sent out to all our landlords currently receiving Housing Benefit for a tenant, providing information regarding our performance such as how quickly we deal with new claims, Housing Benefit information, legislation changes and any other information that may be of interest to a landlord.
So far we have produced a number of newsletters which can be found on our publications web page.
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