Terms & Conditions

[Anonymous]

Picked this up from the Residential Landlord Association:

http://www.rla.org.uk/rla.exe/html/rpi/rpi_06jf_housingbenefit.htm

Some of them don’t appear to like LHA. Wondered what those in the know, know?

[Anonymous]

Having worked for a pathfinder for 18 months I can see good and bad in the whole LHA thing.
The 2 main sticking points are indeed the insistence on paying the claimant, this is definitly going to lead to L/Ls not renting to HB claimants and is just not going to have the effect of ‘teaching’ people to manage their finances. God knows who thought that one up !!!!
And also the fact that it is ‘uncapped’ to the rent level.
It would not take too much effort to say you will get x BUT only up to the total of your rent.
The L/Ls are not going round raising rents all over the place to reflect the LHA, it would just be so much fairer and easier to say we will pay your l/l your rent (as long as the rent was not higher than the LHA). After all how long have claimants said ‘You pay my rent’ well now we can say we do !! But no, we give them the HB plus ..extra money…for nothing..no, really, it’s free..here you go !! Unless you are stuck in the single room rent trap of course. So the more kids you got, the cheaper your accomodation the more income you have !!!!

[Anonymous]

Can I ask, was your pathfinder one that predominantly paid landlords previous to lha?

Was this a change that landlords are struggling to cope with? or is it just the way lha works; doesn’t matter if your rent is less you will get “x” and you and your landlord will just have to cope.

[Anonymous]

They did pay l/ls more often than not, but as soon as someone went onto
LHA (new claims or 12 months after their last RO ref) this was changed automatically to paying the tenant. And the rules for paying the landlord are ridiculously tight. The evidence etc needed is mad. AND the assessors could not make a decision..oh no..it went to a special LHA team who made the decision.
L/Ls and tenants found this a huge problem and loads of counter visits and tele calls were about this !!

[andyrichards]

I think some fresh thinking is required around the direct payment issue. A whole separate bureaucracy seems to have developed around this question of “vulnerability”. And HB officers are now having to adjudicate on quite complex areas of personal difficulty for which I am not sure they are adequately prepared or trained for. I have always thought that claimants should be able to receive HB if they want to and equally should be able to have it paid to the landlord if that is their preference. There should be no pressure or compulsion in either direction (apart from the “hard cases” – clearly vulnerable or dishonest claimants, or clearly inefficient or dishonest landlords). I’m not sure how the current set-up for LHA advances any kind of “personal responsibility” agenda.

Mind you, it’s interesting to see landlords apparently admitting that the direct payment set-up ain’t so bad after all, for all their grumbling! 😆

[Anonymous]

Andy you are quite right about it not helping the personal responsibility agenda, in fact quite the opposite. There were so many cases of claimants being told they could not have there HB paid direct to the l/l anymore and you will never ever guess what happened (in 100s of cases) …go on…guess ……Yep, quite right..letter (or screaming phone call) from l/l saying now well over 8 weeks in arrears !!!!! Quel suprise mon amis (pardonez moi, did not mean to come over all french !!)
Just because someone cannot be classed as ‘vulnerable’ does not mean they can handle there own finances.
Thinking that giving them the money would foster this without giving them some sort of lessons first is very much putting the cart before the horse !!!!

[Andy Thurman]

…and is asking us to pay HB direct to their L/L not, in itself, an example of a person exercising personal responsibility for their finances?! 🙄

[Andi M]

I have also worked in a Pathfinder Authority, and to be honest generally we haven’t found a vast amount of problems. What we have found is some people will pay the rent and some wont, much like people not on benefit. The safeguards, whilst not perfect, are in place but rely on good communication between the LA and the Landlords.

Perhaps the scariest thing i have seen come out of LHA is questions from landlords like ‘well where do i contact my tenant’
Perhaps LHA in some cases will encourage responsibility on more than just the side of the claimant.
That aside there are problems with the levels which need to be addressed

[peterdelamothe]

Well Andi M, might that because you are paying so much more in HB? At the moment I am beseiged with MP enquiries such as “I am a disabled person and have had a rent increase. When I told those horrible Council people, they cut my benefit”!

The Rent Officer seems able to escape any flak. Also, I wonder why the claimant advocates such as CPAG have not gone to the Courts to argue it is unlawful to pay claimants in certain boroughs far more than those living in the next street. Pathfinders are one thing but now we have a new greenpaper. Perhaps they are thinking about it as I write?

[Andi M]

We only have the one BRMA within our LA so all our claims pay from the one set of rates. Also within our BRMA there isn’t much of a difference between the LHA rates and the Rent Office decisions, which as they are both set by the same place you would expect. However i do agree that from talking to some other pathfinder sites there can be huge differences, which obviouslty is a cause for concern.

[Author]

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