Can my client claim UC Housing costs for his flat and claim HB for his residential rehabilitation supported accomodation?

Good question!

I guess UC HCE may continue whilst client is temporarily absent from his LA flat for up to 6 months, and rehab could count as ‘specified accommodation’ for HB. However, your client would have two homes…

From the info you’ve shared, it doesn’t seem that your client satisfies the conditions for either UC HCE or HB to receive benefit for more than one dwelling (fear of violence, delay moving due to disability adapatation, large family requiring 2 properties). So each benefit would require the client to be in occupation of only one of the dwellings.

It doesn’t seem likely that your client could be treated as occupying the LA flat for one benefit and as occupying the rehab centre for another…

Hi,

See the attached. First two paragraphs should be relevant UK wide. The rest relates to Scotland only.

Jim

I’m not convinced by what that document says about rehab for no longer than six months.  As Kelly says, the only way that both HB and UC housing costs could be paid would be if DWP and HB took different views about where the claimant normally lives, and this cannot be taken for granted.

That is the whole problem in cases like this: there is an obvious difficulty in saying to UC “this is still the accommodation which I normally occupy as my home, but I’m temporarily absent for no longer than six months”, while saying to HB “this is the dwelling I normally occupy as my home so I want to claim HB for it”.  On the face of it, those statements cannot both be true, but since you are dealing with different decision makers in different jurisdictions there is a chance they might see it that way and there would be nothing unlawful about that.  But the document in the link above implies this is a guaranteed dual entitlement - it’s not.

But in Scotland!