There are no set Housing Benefit rates - you might get all the rent paid or only part of it. Whether you rent from a council or 'privately' will determine how much Housing Benefit you get.
The amount you get when renting from a council or through social housing will depend on:
Note: A benefits calculator can help you work out how much Housing Benefit you might get. They are free to use, accurate, and independent of the government.
Eligible rent refers to the reasonable amount of rent for a suitable property in the area where you live. It does not include heating charges. But, it can include some service charges such as a communal laundry or for lift service maintenance.
If you live in council or social housing and have a spare bedroom your Housing Benefit can get reduced. As a rule, the amount of reduction for spare bedrooms would be:
An Example: Supposing your eligible rent was £100 per week and your home has one spare bedroom.
According to Housing Benefit rules you might get £50 in benefits and you would pay the other £50.
The amount gets reduced by 14% because of the spare bedroom. In this example, the reduction to your Housing Benefit would be £14 per week.
If you are going to claim Housing Benefit, the council would expect these 'pairs' to share a bedroom:
But, the following circumstances mean the council would expect them to have their own bedroom:
One spare bedroom is usually allowed for foster carers, such as:
Rooms sometimes get used by students, members of the armed forces, or the reserve forces. In this case, the room would not get counted as 'spare' while they are away providing they intend to return home.
If you rent 'privately', they use the Local Housing Allowance rates to work out Housing Benefit amounts. The rate that tenants get is usually based on:
Note: You should contact your local council if you are living in:
An exception applies if you have been receiving Housing Benefit since before the 7th of April 2008. In this case, the limits only apply if:
The lifting of the freeze on Local Housing Allowance rates means something like 900,000 people may see an increase in their Housing Benefit payments.
As a result, the change in Housing Benefit rules could provide around £10 extra a month to the affected households in the private rented sector.
Note: The extra housing payments increase by automatic process from the 1st of April 2020. Thus, you will not need to apply to get the extra cash.
The local council pay Housing Benefit payments to:
The government benefit cap limits the amount of benefit that most people can get between the ages of 16 and 64. Housing Benefit can go down if you get affected by the cap. Thus, make sure the total amount of benefit you get is below the benefit cap level.
Local councils handle Housing Benefit appeals. You should contact your local council to appeal a housing benefit decision. You must contact them to question a decision made by them and follow their appeals procedure.
Housing Benefit Rates in the United Kingdom
