If you are claiming Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction, you must tell us about changes that may affect your claim within one month of the change happening.
What changes do we need to know about?
You need to report changes about you or someone who lives with you, this includes:
- Stopping or starting to receive job seekers allowance (JSA), income support (IS), employment support allowance (ESA) or Universal Credit
- An increase or decrease in income or capital
- The number of people in your household changes
- Stopping or starting work
- Moving house
- Rent goes up or down
- Stopping or starting to receive another state benefit
- Temporary absence from your home especially if your absence is outside of Great Britain
- Anything else that you think may affect your claim.
What will happen if you don’t tell us about a change?
If you do not tell us about a change that affects your claim, you could be receiving too much benefit and have to pay it back to us, or you may not be receiving enough benefit and miss out on your entitlement.
We will usually suspend your claim when we have been told about a change. We do this to try to prevent as much overpayment as we can.
We will usually need more information about your new circumstances to reassess your claim and remove the suspension. If we write to you, you must reply to us within one month of the date on the letter or form sent to you.
Do you need to give us more information?
The forms below are provided if you need to give us additional information to complete your application.
Forms to give us more information
| Backdate request |
We usually only pay benefit from the time you apply. However, under certain circumstances we can go back for a maximum of 1 month (effective from 1st April 2016) |
| Child Care Costs |
If you pay for childcare from a registered provider, you may be able to get more help towards your rent and/or Council Tax |
| Self Employed |
If you work for yourself you will need to provide your latest profit and loss accounts or complete this form |
| Local Housing Allowance (rent arrears) |
To be completed if a tenant has 8 weeks of rent arrears or more and you want to request payments are made directly to the landlord |
| Local Housing Allowance (payments to landlord) |
In most cases payment will be made direct to the tenant and it is their responsibility to pay the rent to the landlord. We recognise that some people may struggle with this responsibility and help is available |
| Property Interest Form |
If you own a property, we may have asked you to provide some information to help us assess your Housing Benefit and Council Tax Reduction |