I have a client aged over 65 in receipt of guarantee pension credit shared rental liability with a friend in his nineties; they both received 50% of full HB. In December her friend went into a nursing home. Housing Benefits were not informed until April. HB have now cancelled her friends benefit back but have not allowed my client benefit saying unable to action as was notified outside the four weeks.

Has anyone any ideas how I should go about helping her and what arguments to use. Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

Your client should have full liability now and HB in full from the Monday following the actual notification?

Also late notification is possible within 13 months of the change having occurred

At the time of making the notificaiton states that it is late

The LA has to be satisfied that there are 'special circumstances' the longer the delay the more compelling the circumstances should be

The LA has to be satisfied that to grant the request is reasonable (ignorance of the duty to notify is not relevant)

The request that a change is notified out of time is not appealable but the change will have the be made at some date and a decision made to that affect, which is appealable

Good luck

My thinking was that as the change in circumstances where not hers then this rule did not apply to her. Her income has remained the same, She is still inside her assessed income period she should still be entitled to maximum benefit, what should she have notified the LA? They are paying her HB from the 24th of April (Monday following notification…)
I will be helping her with a request for late notification, but I am at a loss why she should even have to apply, she is quite a frail old lady.

Her rental liability changed? hence a change in circumstances it was not a neutral change it is a change that is to your clients advantage i.e. had it been the other way and client overpaid they would go back and create an overpayment but request and special circumstances requested to have what is in affect an underpayment, cheers

Thinking aloud....are the council seeking to recover the overpaid benefit from the friend? Even if they are, if they seek recovery from the friend and not the landlord then the rent will remain up to date so it is the friend that will need advice about the OP and your client doesn't have a problem.

I think the LA will recover from the L/L in this instance, but then it will be put on rent her account

I was just wondering if there was a reason for the LA not being informed until April. Although the friend went into nursing home in December did he still have an intention to return to the property at all?

If he had an intention to return albeit unrealistic - and the final decision that he should remain in the home on a permanent basis was not made until April then the LA cannot cancel his HB back to December in any case.

They have individual HB claims and therefore an individual responsibilty to notify of any changes - it may be that someone was acting on behalf of the other tenant and failed to notify. She may not have been aware of the whole of the circumstances.

I think you need to find out a bit more about who was dealing with the affairs of the joint tenant, and when they were made permanently resident in the nursing home.

If you do not get very far with the above, and the Local Authority are saying is a benficial change notified out of the time limits then a letter must be written that gives good reasons why she was unable to tell them sooner.

Don't know much about housing law but can the l/l do this? If they were partners and joint tenants they might both be jointly and severally liable for the whole rent but would this apply to joint tenants who were friends? Wouldn't they just be liable for their portion of the rent under the joint-tenancy until the terms of the tenancy were changed?

This might still leave the friend who has gone into care owing rent but, if all the HB avenues fail, presumably there would be a stronger case to argue that the l/l waive recovery of rent owing from someone who has had to go into residential care.

On the general principles of housing law. The kind of tenancy that exists will largely depend of the facts of occupation rather than on the documentation. The documentation largely provides evidence of the legal relations between the parties.

If a joint tenancy exists then it matters not that the joint tenants are friends or strangers. The tenancy will continue to exist until one of the tenants (with or without the co-operation of the other tenants) gives notice to the landlord of intention to quit the tenancy. At this point (or after the 4 week notice period) the entire tenancy is brought to an end. (see London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham v Monk (1992) HoL). Each will be liable for the whole of the rent until such point.

After this point, as long as a legal liability to pay rent persists, then the remaining tenant is liable for the full rent and therefore for HB for all of the rent.

It is thus arguable that there has been no change in circumstances until either the absence of one of the tenants has become permanent (or the intention to return has been abandoned) or the tenancy has actually been brought to an end by one of the tenants in the above manner.

If the intention to go into the home was permanent from the outset then I would argue that the clock should not start running until the date that the tenancy ended (the date of change of liability) and not necessarily from the date that the person went into the home.