Care and support

Housing benefit

What is it?

Housing benefit is paid by your local council to help people who live in rented accommodation meet the costs of their rent. It is means-tested so any income or savings you have may affect the amount that is paid.

Who can claim?

You must be liable for rent and have savings of £16,000 or less. If you are aged 60 or over and receive the guarantee credit part of pension credit, the £16,000 capital limit does not apply and you will still be able to get full eligible housing benefit.

How much is paid?

As housing benefit is a means-tested benefit, the amount you could receive will depend on a number of factors including how much income and savings you have, the composition of your household, whether you are disabled or a carer etc. NB changes to the rules mean that more pensioners can now get more help with their rent.

Non-dependant deductions

Your housing benefit may be less if other people share your home, e.g. an adult son or daughter. This is known as a non-dependant deduction. However, if you are aged 65 or over and a non-dependant arrives in your household or an existing non-dependant’s income increases, the increase or deduction from your housing benefit will not be applied for 26 weeks.

If you have a non-dependant pensioner living with you who gets pension credit, there will not be a deduction from your benefit for that person whether they work or not.

How to claim

You can claim on a form available from your local council or you can claim on form HCTB1 form that comes with the pension credit form. The Pension Service should ask you if you need a form. You can currently ask for your benefit to be backdated for up to one year as long as you can show you were entitled during that period. However the government is proposing to reduce the amount of backdating to three months from October 08 – please see www.hertsdirect.org/benefits for up to date information.

The Pension Service works closely with local authorities. Therefore, if you are claiming pension credit and you are aged 65 or over your local authority should not need to re-assess all your income and savings if the Pension Service has already done this. They should accept the Pension Service assessment without needing to recheck or verify this information.

Local Housing Allowance

Local housing allowance (LHA) is a new way of calculating Housing Benefit for those renting in the private sector (not local authority or housing association tenants) and will affect new claimants from April 7th 2008.

Local housing allowance will be based on the area in which the property is located (this is known as Broad Rental Market Area and should be widely publicised) and the number of people living in the claimants household.

For more information select the link entitled help with housing costs on the right hand side of the page.