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backdated use and occupation charges ( to 2019!!!)
more of a housing law/ legality question but that will then determne what we do
council property
original tenant died May 2019 - her pension age son was resident at the time and applied for succession
email from Housing at the time say a Notice to quit was issued in June 2019 , that expired in july 2019 and U&O charges would be set up from date NTQ expired while succession was considered.
all fine and he did succeed the tenancy - on PCGC so rent paid in full and everything ticketyboo
.... Until April 2024 when Housing have added rent charges for period May 2019 - July 2019 to his account
my first question is - Is it legal/permissable for housing to do this? They haven’t been able to explain to me WHY they’ve added the charges, just that the U*&O charges should’ve applied form MAy 2019 and now they’ve noticed, they’ve added then to the account. ( resulting in £1500 arrears)
if it is legal /permissible to do this - where does it leave us in terms of his HB? Can I revise that back to 2019 now based on someone elses official error?
would anytime revision due to landlord error ( it was an arms length organisation up until April 2024 so not even sure it’d count as LA error )
Customer is now in his 70’s and diagnosed wioth dementia and is terrified/updst/doesnt understand why he is suddently in arrears.
Use and occupation charges can apply from date the occupier counts as trespasser - which would be from May 2019 in your case.
I suspect the council failed to apply U&O charges until the Notice to Quit expired because this is what they’d do in the case of a joint tenancy where one tenant leaves at end of tenancy but other remains after NTQ expires.
I don’t think there’s anything to prevent them claiming those charges retrospectively, but will have a look… Certainly worth a complaint, at the least!
Use and occupation charges can apply from date the occupier counts as trespasser - which would be from May 2019 in your case.
The successor was never even nominally a trespasser - the landlord agreed he could live there after his mother’s death. And in fact, because there was a succession, there can’t have been any “use and occupation” charges because the secure tenancy continued, even if its status was uncertain for a while.
From the time of the mother’s death until the NTQ expired, the landlord was treating the mother’s estate as liable for the rent. From expiry of the NTQ they then treated him as liable under a personal licence (U & O). But in reality it turned out he was a successor so from the time of the mother’s death he was always liable for the rent.
What I don’t understand is why he wasn’t given HB from the date of his mother’s death on the basis that the person who was liable was not paying, and he needed to pay (Reg 8(c)(ii) HB (pension age) Regs). I think it could be worth looking into whether there’s any official error in the decisions around that - was it even considered at the time?
Quite honestly, I think the landlord is probably most at fault here - retrospectively correcting the rent account at this late date is not great, and I would argue they should have offered to assist him with sorting out the HB at the time (when it could have been done relatively easily). So if you decide it can’t be done with HB and the landlord insists he owes the money, I would be advising him to make a complaint to the landlord.
Thanks Timothy - that makes much more sense. Somehow I thought there was no rent being charged between mum’s death and the succession, and wrongly assumed successor did not have permission to remain in property in the interim.
I will console myself in the knowledge that there’s nothing like a fundamentally wrong answer for getting corrected and receiving the right advice!