Local Housing Allowance is usually paid every four weeks in arrears directly to the tenant. The tenant is then responsible for paying their rent to the landlord, but we may be able to pay the landlord directly in some circumstances.
If your tenant has rent arrears, or they are unable or unlikely to pay their rent, you should contact us for advice. Where there are rent arrears, we will need to see the evidence.
We can only provide information about a claim to those landlords who are receiving direct payments of Housing Benefit or where a tenant has given us written permission to do so. In these cases, the information we can give is limited and does not include the tenant's personal, household or financial circumstances.
Where we pay a landlord direct, we will write to them and let them know the dates that benefit starts and ends and the weekly rate of entitlement.
Landlords who receive direct benefit payments have a legal responsibility to tell us about changes in circumstances that could affect their tenant's entitlement. It is important that changes are reported straight away to avoid any overpayment of benefit. If a tenant leaves a property, any overpaid benefit may be recoverable from the landlord.