Does the local authority have the discretion to ignore a rent officers determination and award HB on the basis of an higher eligible rent ?

No. DHP is the only option.

Not unless the claim is one for exempt accommodation.

Working for an RSL, I have only come up against a rent officer refferral once in 10 years - mind you, I did get that overturned.

Housing Association properties are normally exempt. Rent officer referals should be extremely limited - why was this referral made?

It is quite true that LA's don't have to refer HA rents, but if they do I think they are then stuck with the decision just like any other case.

HA rents are only supposed to be referred if the rent is "unreasonably high" or the accommodation is too large. I had always thought RO referrals on HA properties were extremely rare.

I slightly disagree with Andy.

If the rent is "unreasonably high", or the clmt is overaccommodated, LAs are required to refer to the Rent Officer - RSL status doesn't affect this provision. It's notable that this is not a discretionary provision.

I agree with others that HB is bound by rent officers' decisions. With regard to referrals themselves, surely the word unreasonably in "unreasonably high" introduces an element of discretion.

There will, of course be rents that are so over-inflated that agreement to refer would be near as can be, unanimous (one thinks of Baragrove type levels) but many more would could equally fall either side of the "unreasonable" line and those judgements would themselves be reasonable.

I don't agree that "unreasonably high" introduces discretion. In my view, it is a purely judgement call. I'm pretty sure there is a CD which made it clear that the words "discretion" and "judgement" are not interchangeable - I'm trying to find it, but without success so far.....(seems my own indexing has gone askew).

By way of analogy, I have never seen backdating as being "discretionary". It is mandatory where the criteria are met - good cause being a matter of judgement, not discretion.

Since HA rents are regulated anyway the reason for exemption is obvious for the normal run of cases.

I have only had one case where an RO problem cropped up. As said by others this was a case where the referral was because the rent was considered by an assessor as unreasonably high.

The LA - who agreed that this occurred due to inexperience of a new assessor were broadly in agreement with me.

They accepted that they had an obligation to check with the HA BEFORE a RO referral to see if the rent was reasonable due to reasons not apparent in the HB application. Since in my case this communication had not occured and they did accept reasons when given - they were happy to restore the rent as exempt from RO.

Not sure that this was an exercise in discretion - just an agreement of an LA error in procedure and that regulations allowed them to count the rent as exempt.

But the result was that the RO rent figure was overturned.