The list of conditions enabling someone claiming housing costs to be treated as entitled to and getting Income Support (or ib-JSA) for a period before they make their claim, don't seem to include claimants who were not in receipt Income Support (or ib-JSA) but would have been had they made a claim. Para 14 (4) of IS regs Sch 3 seems to help only claimants who would not have been entitled to Income Support during that period. Can someone confirm that my reading of this is correct?

Thank you

This is to help people satisfy the waiting period for housing costs, in general by treating them as getting the relevant means-tested benefit if certain conditions are fulfilled, without a need for a claim.
They must be getting a non-means-tested benefit (usually SSP/IB/CBJSA) (or occasionally credits), and
the only reason they do not qualify for IS/IBJSA is that their capital or income is too high. - ie, not hours of own or partner's work, not excluded from benefit because a student or person from abroad, etc.

The idea seems to be that if the problem is too much capital only, then you will naturally spend your capital to pay your mortgage interest. This could take quite a long time. If you had to spend your capital and then wait another 39 weeks, it would be a very long time indeed. So the clock starts running as soon as you fulfill all the other requirements for the benefit you would need to claim - IS or IBJSA - except for the capital rules.

It's even easier to see with income. You may have more income than your applicable amount without housing costs (say, partner's part-time earnings, occupational pension or contractual sick pay), but if your housing costs were added you would then have a shortfall. So again even if you claimed benefit at the outset it would do no good - you wouldn't be entitled. And unless there was some way of setting the clock running in this scenario, you could never ever qualify for help with housing costs, so the rule was introduced.

These are thus people who have no choice - their capital or income disqualifies them and they simply can't make an effective claim. I presume the CD that decided that no claim was actually needed (not part of the regs) was really in recovgnition that it is pretty daft to make people put in a claim for a benefit they cannot possibly get, when the evidence of the other facts can establish why no claim was made earlier. Mind you "pretty daft" has never been a reason for not expecting people to do things in social security law...