Terms & Conditions

[julianm]

I can see related topics have been discussed but not (as far as I’ve been able to spot) this exact topic.

My understanding is that under the new regs, if you are a hostel dweller you now have the luxury of not having a time limit for when you have to make a claim for HB on your accommodation. Therefore, if I lived in a hostel for a week in May 2006, I can claim at any time, maybe even years down the line, for that period.

Due to the nature of claims from hostel dwellers, we make many NIL awards of benefit due to failures to provide the information we need.

Normally, if they come back with what we need and have a good reason, we would change our NIL award decision and award benefit using the original claim. We could do this any time up to 13 months after the decision but where do we stand after that.

If these regs apply, could the person just come back and make another claim for the period they lived at the hostel and as long as they provide the info/evidence we need, could we just pay them ?

I would be surprised if this would ever happen more than once in a blue moon but as this is Housing Benefit we are talking about it’s bound to happen at some point.

I can’t see why we couldn’t do it, but have any of the people out there who are far cleverer than me, got a different opinion ?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

I dont see why the scenario you describe could not happen.

It already does sometimes (nothing to do with hostels or new regs); application decided as defective, further application received (maybe with request for backdate), this may or may not be accompanied by the “missing” evidence/information, but, a decision has to be made on it.

I have seen this with “non-commercial” tenancy type situations, or, where an advisor is now assisting with an application; we would rather you revise your original decision but just in case here’s a new application.

Now how about the software/subsidy issues of this?

[Author]

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