How will my benefit be paid?

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Council Tax Benefit

We pay Council Tax Benefit directly to your council tax account.Once the benefit has gone on to your account, you will get a new (recalculated) bill to show you how much Council Tax you still have to pay and what the instalments will be.

Even though you are on benefits, the instalments shown on your recalculated bill are still due and must be paid on time to avoid reminders.

Housing Benefit

If you qualify for any Housing Benefit it will be paid every four weeks in arrears.

• If you rent your property from the council your benefit will be paid directly to your rent account.
• If you rent from a Housing Association (including properties formerly owned by the council), you can either have your Housing Benefit Housing benefit payment request form paid to you 100kb  or directly to your landlord.
• If you rent from a private landlord, or letting agency and your claim comes under the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) scheme your Housing Benefit will be paid to you, not your landlord. It is then your responsibility to make sure your rent is paid on time.

As we pay every four weeks and not once a month, our payments to you may not always arrive at the same time your rent is due, or cover the full amount of rent for that month. It is your responsibility to make sure you keep the money available to pay your rent on time.

Exceptions for LHA tenants

If you claim benefit under the LHA scheme and are more than eight weeks behind with your rent, or we agree that you are unable to handle your own rent payments we will consider paying your Housing Benefit directly to the landlord.

If you would like us to consider paying your landlord directly for any other reason, you should contact your local office to discuss this.

Payments

We can pay your benefit directly into your bank or building society every four weeks or you can have a cheque posted to you every four weeks. We strongly recommend that payments are made directly into a bank or building society account.

The advantages of paying into a bank or building society account are:

• It is safer for you. No cheques lost in the post
• It is easier for you. No need to pay cheques in at your bank or building society
• It allows for payments to be made directly into your chosen bank or building society account making it quicker for you to access your money.

The account can be:

• in your name
• in both the names of yourself and your partner
• in the name of the person acting as your Power of Attorney

If you need help opening a bank account please download the leaflet on opening a basic bank account at www.moneymadeclear.org.uk

Last updated: 23 January 2012