Im looking for some advice re my clients situation (would be grateful for any help!).

Situation is client has severe mental health problems has been in and out of hospital since last june due to overdoses. As a result shes been in no fit state to deal with her affairs and her sisters have had to step in.

Her sister paid her rent for her every month until they contacted us at the end of nov to see if she was entitled to any benefits cos she'd be living off child benefit and her ssp had ended a couple of months beforehand. She now has IB being paid which has been backdated to 02/09 when her ssp ended. Client is also waiting on her child tax credits to be processed as had not claimed these before.

We have put in a claim for HB/CTB i wondered if they would award backdate back to the june which is when her sister started paying her rent for her as she still has to pay her sister back for this. Im not sure if there would be a prob as she has no rent arrears due to the sister paying 9months rent(up till now) for her?

I hope this makes sense and any help would be appreciated in advance!

saima

The issue of whether her rent liability has been discharged is not relevant to any decision on the claim - only the fact that there WAS a genuine, commercial liability.

Therefore I would say that if the LA accepts that there is good cause for a delay in claiming then they should pay HB for the period that the sister was paying the rent. It is equivalent to the claimant themselves meeting payments of rent from whatever resources they had available while waiting for a claim to be assessed. No-one would argue in that case that there would be no HB entitlement because the rent had been paid (well I hope not anyway!)