APA guidance…where’s it gone?

Am I missing something or has this temporarily (I hope) been removed from gov.uk?

Have tried searching on full name of previous guidance ‘Personal budgeting support and alternative payment arrangements’  - and of course have tried search engines other than the function on gov.uk itself.

Anyone got any leads?

there’s this dated april 2016:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/541512/pbs-and-apa-guidance.pdf

Thanks Shawn - did you use a link you’d saved? Because it no longer appears possible to find it otherwise! For training purposes etc I usually avoid using a long link, but (without being paranoid) it really does seem to have become impossible to find without this.

I found this yesterday when searching through google and it looks pretty comprehensive.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-and-rented-housing—2

It wasn’t obvious from the gov.uk search results, but there’s a link from this page:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-and-rented-housing—2

Jinx!!!

Aha - great work both of you.

Thanks….makes sense in a way I suppose given need for DPTLs but doesn’t help advisers where only the other 2 types of APA are involved, though less common I know.

I think the online information on UC could be better presented. Try going into gov.uk as someone interested in how to pay their rent via UC, and click through to see if you can find the above page about APAs. I think you could reasonably end up here, say:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/universal-credit-and-your-home-quick-guide/universal-credit-and-your-home
or https://www.gov.uk/universal-credit/claiming-other-benefits
.. which give you no clue that direct payments might be possible (“You’ll have to arrange with your landlord to start paying your own rent ...”), and gives no links to further info.

Although a claimant can in theory request an APA, it looks like the information that this is possible and how to do so is only given under the ‘landlord’ section of the list of guides, which is itself presented as for ‘partner organisation’ rather than aimed at claimants.

By the way, there was an A-Z directory of sorts for UC, which seems to have vanished (previously linked e.g. here), does anyone know what happened to the “knowledge base”? As I recall, the DWP previously answered some FOI requests by saying that the info was already available in the public domain on those pages…
https://about.universalcredit.service.gov.uk/kms/Pages/Universal_Credit_knowledge_base.htm

All good points. As a claimant, I’m unsure how you are supposed to know that any type of APA exists (but maybe you are NOT supposed to know…).

Daphne, can we make representations about how UC info is presented and indeed what is available?

It’s also interesting in light of this recent thread ...

... the fact that the DWP’s own ‘interactive’ UC housing guide can’t be made available on gov.uk!