A Guide To Housing Benefit Rules

Hello. My name is Lee Healey and I'm the managing director of Income Max, the entitlement experts. We help people to make sense of and understand the benefits of the tax credit system.

Today, we're going to tell you lots about the benefits and tax credits that are available. Here's a quick guide to the housing benefit rules. Now, housing benefit is obviously a benefit you can claim for help with your rent.

And generally, it's aimed at people on a low income. Some customers or some people on certain benefits will be able to get passported to what's called Maximum Housing Benefit. What that basically means if you are entitled to certain benefits like income support, income based job seekers allowance, employment and support allowance, income related, and also guaranteed credit pension credit, that will passport you to what is called Maximum Housing Benefit.

So basically by claiming those benefits, your local authority will accept that you are on a low income and then obviously they will pay what's called Maximum Housing Benefit. It might not be all of your rent but it will be your Maximum Housing Benefit entitlement. For other customers, you will need to claim separately and generally this will mean your claim is actually assessed by the local authority based on your income and your circumstances.

So they will compare your savings, your earnings and so on and so forth to the Housing Benefit Rights to make a decision as to whether they can give you housing benefit or not. And housing benefit can be paid in part or in full. So for example, you might just get 2-pound housing benefit and have to pay the rest of your rent yourself.

So, there's kind of 2 groups of housing benefit claimants. So let's have a look at some more of the basic rules. First of all, you need to be liable for rent.

So first of all, you need to have some kind of commercial arrangement of such and paying rent. It doesn't matter if you're renting a room or a three bedroom house or whatever, but generally, obviously, you need to be liable for rent. Council properties, housing associations, as long as it's rent, you should be fine.

We've already mentioned, obviously you need to have some kind of low income because if you think about it, housing benefit is a means tested benefit anyway. Lastly, there are some savings limits. Now for most customers, if you've got savings of more than 16,000 pounds, you won't be able to claim housing benefit, but there's one group of customers, this doesn't necessarily apply to and that's pensioners who get guaranteed credit.

Now, if you've already been given guaranteed credit and your guaranteed credit has been assessed as having more than 16,000 pounds in savings, you can still claim housing benefit. But apart from that, all other customers will have a 16,000 pound savings limit. So that's a quick guide to the housing benefit rules.

If you're not sure about housing benefit and whether you should claim, it's always worth having a chat with your local authority. For more information on housing benefit, visit the direct gov website. That has lots of information on housing benefit and it's also worth having a look at the local housing allowance rules as well which relates to private sector tenancies, just to see where you stand in relation to that as well.

And that's a quick guide to housing benefit. .