Huddersfield landlady hits out at new housing benefit policy

Jun 13 2009 Huddersfield Daily Examiner

“The main change for landlords is that the payment of LHA will normally be made directly to the tenant who will be responsible for paying the rent themselves.

“Local authorities have developed safeguard policies to help those unable or unlikely to pay their rent themselves and we encourage landlords to contact their local authority if payments are being missed so they can investigate and take appropriate action.”

“The safeguards are based on the circumstances presented to them by the landlords, tenants and their representatives. Local authorities can consider paying the landlord directly where there is evidence to suggest that the tenant is unlikely to pay their rent and making direct payments would be in the interests of the tenant.

“Where arrears of benefit have reached eight weeks, the local authority will arrange to make payments direct to the landlord unless it is not in the tenant’s overriding interests to do so.

“However, landlords are encouraged not to wait for the eight week period to be reached before contacting the local authority.”

The spokesman added: “We have tested LHA with a number of local authorities since 2003 and changes have been made to LHA for national rollout as a result of the work done by the pilot authorities”.