editor posted on April 16, 2010 05:10
Local Housing Allowances (LHA) have been in place since April 2008 when they were introduced as a new way of calculating Housing benefit for those renting property from private landlords.
Until now, LHA has only been paid directly to the landlord if there are exceptional reasons - e.g. if the tenant is unable to handle their financial affairs, has a bad history of paying landlords or was more than 8 weeks in arrears. If the tenant was in arrears by more than 8 weeks, benefit would be paid directly to the landlord.
Now, following new guidance issued to local authorities, the “eight week rule” has effectively been halved and can be applied at the beginning of a second month of arrears rather than at the end of the second month.
As with all issues, the quicker one can get on the case of resolving them, the higher the likelihood of success and the lower the financial risk.
As always, your local Lenwell team will be happy to talk, in confidence about any individual situations.