Benefits
1. Can I claim Housing and/or Council Tax Benefit?  Housing and/or Council Tax Benefit is a means tested benefit and there is no sliding scale, therefore, your entitlement to benefit depends upon your personal circumstances. If you have capital of £16000 or over, unless you are in receipt of Guaranteed Pension Credit, you would not qualify for Housing and/or Council Tax Benefit. If you would like to make a claim for benefit, we would be happy to send you an application form. Once you have completed the form, please return it to this office (see contact us for our details) and we can consider your claim. Or you can use our Benefit calculator to see if your should claim Housing and/or Council Tax Benefit. 2. How do I go about renting privately and claiming Housing Benefits?  If you are looking for a privately rented property and know that you will put in a claim for Housing Benefit and you are are on of the following: If you are:
Our advice would be to complete a pre-tenancy determination form before you sign for the tenancy of a property. This form enables us to capture all the details of the property you are interested in. Once you have completed the form and returned it to this office, we will fax your form through to the Rent Office in Leicester. They are an independent organisation who decide whether a rent is fair, taking into account the size of property and the average local rent for the area. They will make a decision regarding your rent and will write to you within 5 working days of the date that they receive your pre-tenancy determination form. If they think that the rent is fair then we can consider this amount of rent in your Housing Benefit calculation. If they think that the rent is not a fair rent, then they will give you a figure which they do think is fair and this is the maximum amount that we can use in your Housing Benefit calculation. You can complete as many pre-tenancy determination forms as you would like as long as you have not signed for the tenancy. If your circumstances are not in the above list, your claim will be assessed under the Local Housing Allowance scheme and you will not need to complete a Pre-tenancy Determination form. You can find out how much you could claim under the Local Housing Allowance scheme, please go to the Local Housing Allowance rates page. Therefore, this enables you to make an informed decision whether you can afford to take the property on and if need be, pay any difference that you may not receive in Housing Benefit. 3. How long will it take to assess my claim?  We aim to assess all claims within 14 days of the last piece of information being received. It is important that all information is provided promptly to enable us to comply with the 14-day requirement. We do have a Golden Promise that if you can bring in to the office all the relevant information for your claim before 3pm - your claim can be assessed while you wait. Alternatively if you cannot wait, the Benefits Office can call you with the outcome of your claim, once your claim has been dealt with. 4. What happens if I cannot provide the information within the time limits on your letter? Unfortunately we cannot extend the time limit on the letters, however if you can provide the information at the earliest possible date with a statement confirming why the information was not provided earlier, the Benefits Team can consider whether to re-open the original claim. However it must be noted that we are only able to consider re-opening claims where the delay in providing evidence is reasonable, e.g. the Job Centre were not able to process your claim for benefits that we were waiting for within our time limit. 5. Will my claim be backdated? If you would like your claim to be backdated, you will need to put this in writing confirming when you would like your benefit backdated to and the reasons why you did not make your claim at this date. This request will be passed to an assessor who will make a decision on your claim and will inform you in writing of their decision.6. What do I do if I do not agree with your decision on my claim?  If you do not agree with a decision made on your claim for benefit, you will need to put it in writing within one month of the date of the letter which was sent to you stating the decision. You will need to state which decision you disagree with and advise us of why you feel that it is wrong. We may also need to see proof of documentary evidence if this is appropriate to the disagreement.7. Can you speak to any one else about my claim for benefit?  Unless the person is your appointee or has power of attorney for you we cannot discuss your claim with anyone else due to data protection. However if the person calls or visits our office who is not your appointee or has power of attourney for you but you are present and give consent to speak to them then we can talk to them about your claim. But it must be noted that you must be present with that person. 8. When will my change in circumstances be actioned? How will the change affect my benefit entitlement?  We aim to assess changes in circumstances within 14 days of notification or when evidence is provided. We cannot make a decision of how benefit will be affected before formal notification, however you can use our Benefit calculator where you can enter your new circumstances and check what your new benefit will be. 9. How come XXXX is receiving benefit when I know that he/she is working or has got someone living with them? Due to data protection we cannot give out information about a person's claim, however if you would like to report this, then you can call our 24 hour benefit fraud hotline on 01455 255683 and our Benefit Enquiry Unit will look into this. If you would like to talk to a member of the Benefit Enquiry Unit privately, please contact 01455 238141 and ask for the Benefit Enquiry Unit. |