Just wondering in HB regs 5(5)if anyone can help me with what the definition of MOVE is. My client is/was living in supported accomodation, he has just taken up a council tenancy but the accomodation where he is living will not let him stay in his new flat until they have checked it and the gas is uncapped. He does have electric, and has moved most of his belongings into the new property - can moving his stuff in count as MOVING or does he have to have spend the night there.

At the moment he is liable to pay rent on both properties, but if we can say he has moved into the new one then we should get the HB for both, otherwise he'll be stuck with paying both - I know it only amounts to one week overall - but he really can't afford that - but hey ho who can!
many thakns for your help

There is some very helpful guidance on this subject in a reported decision R(H)9/05 - There the commissioner puts to rest the notion that the tenant has to physically move in on day one of the tenancy, particularly if there are very good reasons why he cannot, as in this situation - in these cases he should get rent on both homes paid.

thanks for this very helpful

Playing devil's advocate; in the CD mentioned, the home was in itself actually habitable. Where the home is not habitable, I suspect it could be argued that circumstances in the CD can be distinguished.

...but does it not say that, in essence, that the definition of "occupation" of the home does not necessarily mean that one has to personally moved in - as long as belongings have been moved in then one has taken up occupation:-

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6. the claimant fell within paragraph 8B(a) of regulation 5 because she did intend to return to occupy the dwelling as her home. The word "return" in this context required that she should previously have occupied the dwelling, but that occupation could be by her agents who moved her property into the dwelling and did not have to be by her personally (paragraph 21). She was therefore to be treated as occupying the property as her home from 15 March, and also, by virtue of regulation 5(6) for a period of four weeks prior to that date, that is from 16 February;

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Kevin

I agree with you that the case is distinguished on the facts but I would argue that the commissioner was laying down a general principle here. I am fortified in this conclusion by the way the decision strains the meaning of the word return, when she was never physically in the prooperty in the first
Regards
Paul