Universal credit process for new claims and housing costs

[Part 2]

My son's just finished university and is moving to London. On Tuesday he's moving into a room in a flat in Poplar.There's two other people in the other rooms of the flat. He actually started paying the rent on it a few weeks ago but has been out of the country.

He has a dentist appointment on Tuesday morning and hasn't seen a dentist for three years so with possible big bill looming I'd really rather not pay for it and I've been helping him to make a claim before then. Of course one of the first questions is about housing costs, he doesn't know all the details, how much rent, name of the landlord etc...and flatmates are currently on holiday so he may not have them before moving in. We've completed the application and left them off for now waiting to add them before submitting.

I've looked at the local housing allowance rates and they won't cover the full rent but he has some savings (not enough to effect a claim)...and he's hopeful of finding work.

Claiming benefits used to be my bread and butter but it's a long time ago, before universal credit and I'm getting a bit stressed with it tbh he's not great at preparing for things and has done a lot of stuff without thinking about it. A few questions...

Does he need the other occupants details or is he classed as a separate household?

He may not have a tenancy agreement. If the room is being sublet whose details does he need....one of the tenants,? or the landlord?

Can UC be backdated to when he started paying for the room?

If he puts the claim in tomorrow or Tuesday morning saying he has no housing costs I'm assuming they'll invite him in for an appointment. Can he turn up there and tell them he's found somewhere at that point and needs to add them to the claim?... (but would that prevent any possible backdating?)

He's hoping for an advance to cover accommodation, do such things still exist?.... would it be expected that he pays from his savings?

Obvs I'm getting confused over which order is best to do things and want to help as much as possible but not really from my bank account if he's got a right to claim.

Thanks for any help.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Does he need the other occupants details or is he classed as a separate household?

I used to do housing benefits work, but that was quite a long time ago now, so with the caveat that a lot will have changed, and i doubt any of it is in the claimant's favour...

Then, house-sharers / occupants of other bed-sits in the same building were not the same as 'household', and I would have thought that's still the case, and not sure you even had to give the names of other occupants.

'household' tended to mean 'living together as a couple' in terms of joint finances, joint food-buying and cooking and so on (or person claiming + dependent children and so on).

it was occasionally necessary, if you were in a house-share with someone of the opposite sex, to prove that you had separate catering arrangements, as well as not obviously sharing a bed (the benefits system then took the line that same sex couples did not exist, so even if you were in a same sex couple, you were treated as two single people even if you did share a bed)

You could claim HB as a house-sharer / bedsit occupant irrespective of the financial circumstances / earnings of your co-residents, but you needed to have something on paper that showed you were a tenant. At that time, we were reasonably flexible, and would accept a letter from landlord, some evidence that you were paying rent, if there wasn't a formal tenancy agreement.

does he have his own tenancy agreement, or named as one of joint tenants? (landlords tend to try and do the latter as they can then try and extort money out of the other tenants if one of them buggers off owing money.)

If it's the sort of set-up where landlord A owns the place, rents the whole place to person B, and person B then rents some of the rooms out to C and D, then as far as C and D are concerned, their landlord is B. Does he have anything at all on paper? And any evidence he's paid some rent?

Can UC be backdated to when he started paying for the room?

that i don't know.

backdating HB used not to be that easy - you used to need a damn good reason (like having been unexpectedly in hospital) - I doubt it has got any easier. Asking won't do any harm, but frankly I doubt it.

What is Universal Credit (UC)? - Turn2us may be worth a look.

 

[Part 2]

I used to do housing benefits work, but that was quite a long time ago now, so with the caveat that a lot will have changed, and i doubt any of it is in the claimant's favour...

Then, house-sharers / occupants of other bed-sits in the same building were not the same as 'household', and I would have thought that's still the case, and not sure you even had to give the names of other occupants.

'household' tended to mean 'living together as a couple' in terms of joint finances, joint food-buying and cooking and so on (or person claiming + dependent children and so on).

it was occasionally necessary, if you were in a house-share with someone of the opposite sex, to prove that you had separate catering arrangements, as well as not obviously sharing a bed (the benefits system then took the line that same sex couples did not exist, so even if you were in a same sex couple, you were treated as two single people even if you did share a bed)

You could claim HB as a house-sharer / bedsit occupant irrespective of the financial circumstances / earnings of your co-residents, but you needed to have something on paper that showed you were a tenant. At that time, we were reasonably flexible, and would accept a letter from landlord, some evidence that you were paying rent, if there wasn't a formal tenancy agreement.

does he have his own tenancy agreement, or named as one of joint tenants? (landlords tend to try and do the latter as they can then try and extort money out of the other tenants if one of them buggers off owing money.)

If it's the sort of set-up where landlord A owns the place, rents the whole place to person B, and person B then rents some of the rooms out to C and D, then as far as C and D are concerned, their landlord is B. Does he have anything at all on paper? And any evidence he's paid some rent?



that i don't know.

backdating HB used not to be that easy - you used to need a damn good reason (like having been unexpectedly in hospital) - I doubt it has got any easier. Asking won't do any harm, but frankly I doubt it.

What is Universal Credit (UC)? - Turn2us may be worth a look.

Thanks I'll do some reading in the morning.

He knows the other occupants of the flat and one of them has already offered him some work in a club he's been to but it won't be enough to survive on and my feeling is he'll still be entitled to some UC. He's paid rent to the previous occupant to take over the room as she'd paid rent up front. Apparently the landlord is sound and will give him a tenancy agreement if necessary. He hasn't had to pay a deposit or anything.

Sounds like a bit of a can of worms and he's not really got much experience of dealing with officials and I want to make sure he gets everything he's entitled to. I worked with young people for years and know how daunting appointments with benefits staff are and how the system is set up to make it hard.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

and my feeling is he'll still be entitled to some UC.

again, i'm too long out of the game to be sure, but fairly sure you can still claim UC if you're working part time - although think you now have to prove you're looking for full time work. it's possibly better not to make it sound like it's definite until it happens, though. the 'turn2us' site will have more, including a benefits calculator where you can enter numbers for rent / earnings etc and it will tell you if you're entitled to anything and if so how much.

in theory, UC was supposed to be able to cope with more 'flexible' (i.e. shit zero hours etc) employment where your earnings go up and down from one week to another (in the old HB days, we'd take an average across x number of weeks and re-calculate every so often if someone was in this sort of job) - I'm not sure how it works in practice, and have heard suggestions it may be a problem if you get the occasional week where you go over either an hours worked / amount earned threshold. i don't understand the detail.

Apparently the landlord is sound and will give him a tenancy agreement if necessary. He hasn't had to pay a deposit or anything.

probably be worth getting the claim in soonest, even if he hasn't got the documents - again, in old HB days, you could start your claim, then you'd be given a few weeks to come up with the necessary documentation, but the important thing was your claim had started from when you put the application in, not when you came up with the last bit they wanted (so long as you didn't take the piss that is.) Can't say if it still works like that.

Sounds like a bit of a can of worms and he's not really got much experience of dealing with officials and I want to make sure he gets everything he's entitled to. I worked with young people for years and know how daunting appointments with benefits staff are and how the system is set up to make it hard.

Think if he goes in knowing that it's now a benefit denial system, rather than a system designed to help people get benefits, that's probably a good start. it's probably unfair to say everyone who works in the DWP is a twunt, but it seems to be an advantage, what with targets for sanctions and so on - i have a feeling that people who aren't twunts are gradually either getting out, or being 'performance managed'...