Housing costs in the pilot areas

The commencement order allowing the UC pilot exercise to go ahead must surely be the most fiendishly complicated commencement order ever written.  So far as I can make out, however, it does not abolish HB anywhere for any purpose: the commencement of s33 only abolishes two of the three means-tested DWP benefits. Right?

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/983/article/4/made

This means presumably that DWP is not yet ready to handle renters’ housing costs of any kind at all in the pilot areas.

Then there are the transitional regs which define the pathfinder group and include a requirement that the person does not have LCW:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/386/regulation/6/made

So taking all that together, the UC pathfinder exercise consists of a handful of jobseekers in the east Manchester area receiving JSA with a new name ... will they even notice?

Is it really as limited and unambitious as that?  If so it is very difficult to see the roll-out gathering much momentum any time soon.  No new claims for any legacy benefits anywhere by October 2014 seems an impossible dream.

I had been under the impression that renters in mainstream private or social housing would get their housing costs covered by UC in the pathfinder areas, but if HB still exists for those people I cannot see how.  There is nothing to stop them from getting HB, which will trigger UC(TP) Reg 7, which will stop them getting UC.  So only non-renter jobseekers in a couple of streets out Ashton-way will get pathfinder Universal look-its-not-JSA-its-UC-OK?-just-shut-up Credit.

Presumably the experiment will be an enormous success.

P.S. Aha, I think I have found something: UC(TP) Reg 15 will stop someone from getting HB if they claim UC first - Regs 7 and 15 compete against each other don’t they?  You cannot get A if you already get B and you cannot get B if you already get A.  So if the events fall in the right order a jobseeker making a new claim in the pathfinder area, not having previously been on any legacy benefits, could get UC including renters’ housing costs.