Help!
we have a tenant who renewed her hb claim in March 2004 and was awarded full entitilement of £395 pw. She received a notification letter to this effect.
Payments of housing benefit made however suggest that the rent has been restricted to £214 pw. HB originally denied sending out a notification letter confirming the award, they changed their story when confronted with a copy, at which point they said the rent had been restricted, they have not sent out any written notification to date.
We are currently considering applying for DHP in the interim, what other options do we have regarding the shortfall from the assessment we were notified off. Would we be better-off applying for the DHP after we have received written confirmation of the rent restriction?

Before anyone suggestd that the rents are high, this is a temporary accomodation property.

If this is an HA property that does not have to be referred to the rent officer they must have made a decision that the rent was unreasonably high, but not notified it.

That being the case the decision is of no effect and the original (notified) decision should stand.

This would enable the claimant to sue in the county court for debt.

I think it is worth the risk of financing your tenant to do just that as the LA's behaviour is outrageous.

I do not think going for a DHP in these circumstances makes any sense because on the one hand the LA is saying that the rent is unreasonable so they wont pay, and on the other hand you are asking them to dip into a cash limited budget to pay a rent at the level that they have just refused to pay out of the normal HB budget

Thanks Stainsby, we just realised that we made a mistake on the rent figure and being the nice landlords that we are, have made the adjustments and everyone's happy again.