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Information for landlords

As a benefits service provider, Broxbourne Council realises the importance of effective partnerships with landlords. Our aim is to ensure landlords receive benefit payments promptly. The Data Protection Act prevents us from disclosing certain information regarding tenants. When making enquiries regarding your tenants, please respect that we are required by law to adhere to the claimant's confidentiality and the Data Protection Act.

We can pay your tenants' housing benefit entitlement directly to yourself provided your tenant agrees or if they are more than eight weeks in arrears with their payments. If your tenant's claim started after the 7 April 2008 we will normally make payments direct to your tenant. See Local Housing Allowance Information for Landlords.

Direct payments are an efficient and guaranteed method of payment that is paid directly into the landlords' bank account. This type of payment will speed up our payment process, preventing cheques being lost or delayed in the post and landlords will no longer have to wait for cheques to clear.

If you are interested in transferring to the BACS system and would like further information, please contact us on 01992 785503.

Change to a tenant's circumstances

You must inform the benefits section in writing immediately if your tenant moves out or temporarily moves out. If you are aware of any other change to their circumstances that may affect their entitlement please advise us straight away. Examples of circumstances we need to know about are:

wages increase, decrease or tenant starts of stops work
income support or jobseeker's allowance starts or finishes
increase or decrease of any other income
increase or decrease in their capital or savings
people moving in or out of the property or the birth of a baby

If you are in doubt whether a change of circumstances will affect your tenants benefit, please inform us anyway.

Rent restrictions

We have to refer details of properties to the Rent Service. The Rent Service is independent to the Council. They will decide if the rent of a property and the size of the accommodation are reasonable.

If they decide that either the rent or the size of the accommodation is unreasonable they will recommend an amount which is reasonable. We will then use this amount when assessing entitlement to housing benefit.

If your tenant is single and under 25 years old, the rent we will use will be restricted to the average amount of rent charged locally for a single room with shared use of toilet and kitchen.

Overpayments

When we pay housing benefit direct to a landlord and their tenant's entitlement to housing benefit changes we may ask the landlord to repay the money, which has been overpaid.

Therefore it is important that you tell us about any changes in your tenant's circumstances.

The recovery of overpayments

If your tenant's entitlement to housing benefit changes and the benefit is paid direct to you, an overpayment could have been created and we may ask you to repay the overpaid monies. If it is appropriate to recover the overpayment from you, an invoice will be issued, which will show the period and amount of overpayment. Arranging the payment of the overpayment is your responsibility and details of how to repay can be found on the invoice.

If you have difficulty repaying the money, our recovery team will be happy to negotiate repayment by instalments.

If you fail to make repayment of overpaid housing benefit we can recover outstanding payments from any future payments of housing benefit due to be paid to you.