Briefing on proposals to stop HB payments for communal services
January 30, 2012
This briefing tells you about:
Proposals to stop HB paying for communal fuel and cleaning in shared rooms in hostels and similar shared housing.
The continuation of restrictions on benefit claims by Bulgarians and Romanians.
COMMUNAL AREAS
Housing benefit regulations have always said that the cost of cleaning and fuel for lighting and heating in communal areas is NOT eligible for benefit except in sheltered housing.
Advisors have always maintained that all supported housing can be treated as sheltered housing and that the costs should be eligible. Nearly all housing benefit offices have agreed and, in most cases, these costs have been treated as eligible since 1989.
It takes a while for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to catch up and it was not till a year or so ago that they issued advice to councils telling them that supported housing was not sheltered housing and that they should not pay for these services, but only for fuel and cleaning in communal corridors, stairs etc.
Some councils took this up and stopped paying. This led to appeals, one of which reached the upper tribunal as case CH/322/2011. The judge decided that supported housing WAS sheltered housing so the communal room costs were eligible.
Oxford City Council and the DWP have appealed this decision to the Court of Appeal and the case was due to be heard this month. The DWP seem to think that they are going to lose the appeal because on 25th of January they issued general information bulletin G1 2012 in which they announced their intention to introduce new regulations which would make cleaning and fuel in common rooms ineligible in any accommodation where residents just had one room and shared the common facilities.
The DWP's argument seems to be that in sheltered housing there are common rooms that are wholly outside the dwelling, but in shared housing the common rooms are just replacements for the rooms that most claimants would have within their home.
The DWP seems to think that the issue is confined to a few cases where claims were made following the upper tribunal decision and they have asked for information about any claims that are affected.
It is important that you tell them.
They have set a deadline of Wednesday 8 February 2012 which is very short. Send your responses to Dave.Jones@dwp.gsi.gov.uk
Please pass this briefing on to as many people as possible so that they can respond too.
You might want to say:
How many claims are affected;
How long councils have been paying for communal fuel and cleaning (for example, "since 1989", "for as long as I can remember")
Why it would be a bad idea to make this change. You might highlight the extra costs of cleaning because of the need to pay for a cleaner, the lack of control residents have over costs, the hardship caused to tenants if they had to meet these costs out of their personal money, the difficulty of collecting these charges from residents etc.
Note that fuel for residents to cook their own meals is always ineligible, wherever it is provided, and that if the DWP wins its appeal the cost of fuel and cleaning in communal rooms will become ineligible immediately, without any need for legislation.
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