Title: Landlord Update November 2009
Author: ian lloyd
Last saved by: nikki sampson
Company: Isle of Wight Council

Landlord Update July 2010 		
		
As part of the Isle of Wight Council’s Benefits Service continued liaison with Landlords, this update is to provide you with the latest news surrounding recent changes introduced or proposed by Central Government to the Housing and Council Tax Benefit schemes. This update is also intended to provide you with information on our current service delivery and other points of interest.

Local Housing Allowance latest
The Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates are published every month on our website. The level of Local Housing allowance normally applies for a period of twelve months from the date a claim is received. Once twelve months has passed the level of Local Housing Allowance is amended based on the current rates and set for another twelve month period. 
The July LHA rates are listed below for your information.
01 July 2010 – 31 July 2010
Category | Room Need | LHA Rate Applicable
A | Shared room rate | weekly: £ 67.00 monthly:  £ 290.33
B | 1 Bedroom | weekly: £ 97.81 monthly:   £ 423.84
C | 2 Bedroom | weekly: £ 126.58 monthly: £ 548.51
D | 3 Bedroom | weekly: £ 155.34 monthly: £ 673.14
E | 4 Bedroom | weekly: £ 195.62 monthly: £ 847.69
F | 5 Bedroom | weekly: £ 253.15 monthly: £ 1096.98
The Local Housing allowance rates are based on market data for non Housing Benefit tenancies supplied to the Valuation Office. Any landlord who is renting property to tenants not in receipt of Housing Benefit can supply data to the Rent Service and information of how to do this is available on their website.    http://www.voa.gov.uk/housing_benefit/lettingsresearch.htm 
Rent arrears 
From 7.4.2008 Local Housing allowance was introduced. Housing Benefit paid under these rules is normally paid directly to the tenant. Landlords’ can only be paid direct if the claimant is considered vulnerable, unlikely to pay rent, has a record of non payment or there are rental arrears in excess of eight weeks. 

The Local Authority has requested landlords advise the Benefit Section as soon as the tenants are in arrears, confirming this in writing with a breakdown of how the arrears have arisen. If Housing Benefit is in payment, action will be taken to try to establish why the tenant is not making payment. Problems do occur if the tenant has not given the Local Authority permission to discuss their claim with their landlord and, due to Data Protection, the Local Authority are not able to advise the landlord  if a claim is held if permission has not been given.

The procedure when advised of arrears is to suspend claims immediately, a letter is sent to the claimant to advise that there is a rent arrears allegation requesting a response to the Benefit Section within 7 days to discuss future payments and advising that no further payment will be made until they have contacted the section.

If a claimant contacts the Benefit Section and there are no genuine reasons for the arrears, payments are changed to pay the landlord for a period of time, both the landlord and tenant are advised in writing of this decision.  This decision is reviewed on a regular basis to check the level of arrears, if the landlord is actively seeking the recovery of those arrears and whether payment should revert back to the tenant. A further decision notifies the Landlord and tenant of to whom future payments will be issued, before payments are amended.  

In the circumstances where after the 7 days no response has been received from the initial letter sent to the tenant, a Visiting Officer is sent to the property to speak to the claimant directly and also to check that the tenant is in fact still resident in the property.  If the claimant is out the Visiting Officer will leave a card requesting that the claimant contacts the Benefit Section immediately. 

The following day a letter is sent from the Benefit Office to advise that the Visiting Officer called and again requests that they contact the Benefit Section to either arrange a further visit or to discuss the claim. If no contact is made by the tenant the Local Authority has to consider residency. When residency is doubted no payments can be made as Benefit ceases to be payable when a tenant is not resident. 

Whilst every effort is made to contact the claimant, it is also the landlord’s responsibility to continue to try to contact their tenant and to get them to respond to the Benefit Section so that the matter can be resolved. Unfortunately, if contact can not be made by the service and residency cannot be established, the Local Authority has no other course of action than to terminate the claim.  Any rental liability that benefit can not assist with is a matter between the tenant and landlord.

Future changes to the Benefit scheme
There has been various proposals announced to the Housing Benefit scheme within the June 2010 Emergency Government Budget.  It has also been indicated that there are further reforms to Housing Benefit due to be announced in the coming months.

In case you have not seen them, a summary of the main changes already announced are listed below. Some of the changes will require changes to primary legislation, which will involve the proposals going through Parliament.  The full detail of these proposals is still to be made clear.

Proposals already announced:

From April 2011
•	LHA levels will be restricted to the four bedroom rate
•	An additional bedroom will be awarded for a non-resident carer in prescribed circumstances, however, details of the circumstances have not been released.
From October 2011
•	Non-dependant deductions will be increased by a higher amount than normal for a period of three years, reversing the freeze in rates since 2001-2002.    
•	LHA levels will be set at the 30^th percentile of rents in the Broad Market Area and not at the median. As a result, the previously announced change to remove the top 1% of rents in calculating the LHA level will be abandoned.
Other proposals
•	The £15 “excess” Local Housing allowance payment will cease, possibly from April 2011 
•	From April 2011 working age customers in receipt of certain benefits (for instance Jobseekers Allowance) will receive full Housing Benefit for a maximum of one year. After that period, Housing Benefit will be reduced by 10% however it is unclear from what point the 12 months will count.
•	Discretionary Housing Payments will be increased by £10 million in 2011 and £40 million in 2012 to give Local Authorities more flexibility to help those facing particular hardship.
•	From 2013 LHA levels will be up-rated taking into account the consumer price index rather than local rent changes.
•	From April 2013 Housing Benefit will be restricted for those living in the social sector; specifically for working age claimants living in property larger than their needs.
As legislation details become available, information will be included in the quarterly update.   Landlords are also encouraged to attend the Isle of Wight Landlord Information Fairs (see below for details).
The Valuation Office agency have published a list providing indicative figures showing how the planned changes announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 22 June could affect Local Housing Allowance rates, which is available at  http://www.voa.gov.uk/LHADirect
Performance 
Our local targets for 2009/10 were to process all new claims on average within 20 days, change of circumstances within 9.5 days and our National Indicator 181 (Right Time) target was to process all new claims and change events within 13.5 days.   Our reported performance is as follows:

| 2009/2010 | Apr 2010 | May2010 | Jun2010 | Year to date average 2010
New Claims : end to end processing (days) | 16.62 | 20.20 | 19.06 | 16.94 | 18.66
Changes in circumstances (days) | 8.07 | 10.27 | 12.11 | 11.33 | 11.25
National Indicator 181 (Right Time) | 10.61 | 11.13 | 11.33 | 8.81 | 12.58

Our local targets for 2010/2011 are to process new claims on average within 17 days, changes of circumstances within 8.5 days and our National Indicator 181 (Right Time) target to process all new claims and changes events within 11 days.  The targets are the annual average figures to be achieved.  The first quarter is always very busy and the targets for this period usually reflect this variance compared to other times throughout the year. Despite performance with processing Change of Circumstances being impacted by a 70% increase in the number of change events required to be processed, when compared to same period last year, the Benefits Service is making every effort to achieve the challenging end of year target performance figures. 

Isle of Wight Landlord Events 
The next Isle of Wight Landlord Information Fair organised by Housing Services is due to be held at the end of November 2010. Details of the date and venue will be provided nearer the time. 
If you do not receive invitations to this event and would like to do so, please email: Housing@iow.gov.uk 
or The Housing Section on telephone: 01983 823040. 

This update is also available on our website at: www.iwight.com within the Local Housing Allowance Section, Information for Landlords.  If you have any suggestions for future content you would like included in this update, please email the service at housing.benefit@iow.gov.uk.  Please ensure you put a subject heading ‘Landlord News Letter Item’ in your email.