Useful information for landlords
We recognise that landlords are important. Without landlords willing to let to tenants who receive Housing Benefit we cannot do our job. We will work with you in the following ways.
- We will action changes of circumstances reported by yourselves promptly
- We will work with you to help your tenant’s claim
- Our application forms allow claimants to agree that you can be told about their claim as well as the payments. We will then give you as much information as we can under the law
- We can make payments direct to yourself at the claimants request if their claim started before 07 April 2008
- If a payment we make is for more than one claimant, we will send out a schedule showing a breakdown of each claimant and period. This will be sent securely
- We will give you information on your rights and duties if you receive Housing Benefit payments direct
- Notification letters sent to you will comply with the regulations. Your appeal rights will appear on these letters
- If tenants are more than eight weeks in arrears and they do not dispute this, we can pay the Housing Benefit direct to you. If there is any dispute, we will ask you for satisfactory proof of the arrears
- We encourage you to contact us if you are considering evicting your tenant
- Overpayments made to yourselves will be recovered in line with our Overpayments policy
(PDF 79 KB) and procedures - We will not however seek to recover an overpayment from you if it was the result of fraudulent action by the claimant. Unless you had some involvement in the fraud
- If you report suspicions of fraud, we will refer them to the Corporate Anti-Fraud Team promptly
- We will seek suggestions and improvements to the service from yourself and involve you in the changes
For further information please look at our landlord leaflet (PDF 127 KB)
You can also look at our policies for landlords and overpayments code of practice.
