LANDLORDS and tenants waiting for their regular housing benefit payments have been hit by a computer failure.

Payments due today were not sent out because of the problems at Kirklees Council.

Council Cabinet member Clr Paul Battye said: "The main computer that runs the revenues and benefits systems developed a fault on Monday.

"Our Kirklees technical department has been working with our system suppliers to resolve the problem as quickly as possible."

He revealed this could be in the next few days.

The service is asking that customers do not contact them to query their payments for the time being.

Clr Battye said it was not expected that new and incoming claims would be adversely affected.

He added: "I am very sorry that customers will have a short delay in receiving their payments.

"We have kept records to show which payments have not been issued, and it is our first priority to get these out to people."