|
Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is the new way of calculating the maximum amount of Housing Benefit you could receive and will apply from 7th April 2008. The amount of Housing Benefit you get will still depend on your income and capital, it is only the way the maximum Housing Benefit is calculated that is changing.
LHA will not affect you if:
- You pay rent to Warwick District Council or you are a tenant of a registered social landlord - we will still be able to calculate your benefit on the maximum eligible rent charge.
- Your Tenancy started before 15th January 1989 - your benefit will still be calculated on the registered rent set by the rent officer.
If you live in one of the following groups the maximum rent benefit you can receive will be calulated under the old rules.
- You live in a caravan, houseboat or hostel.
- Or the Rent Officer has decided that a large part of the rent you pay for your tenancy is for meals cooked for you.
- You live in supported housing.
If you are not in one of the above groups and you claim Housing Benefit after the 7th April 2008, your Housing Benefit will be worked out using LHA. If you are already receiving Housing Benefit, the rules will not change until you:
- Change address.
- Temporarily stop claiming for at least a week.
Then we will calculate your new claim under the LHA rules.
The maximum amount of Housing Benefit you can receive will be set beforehand by the Rent Officer and will depend on how many bedrooms someone in your circumstances needs. The maximum amount you could receive will be the same for every same-sized household in the area you live in (the Rent Office calls these broad rental market areas), no matter what differences there are in the actual rent you and the other households pay.
You can calculate how many bedrooms we will take into account under the rules and your maximum Housing Benefit will be the LHA rate for the number of bedrooms you are allowed in the broad rental market area you live in.
The Rent Service will publish new LHA rates every month.
For more information download a guide to Local Housing Allowance Leaflet (170kb, PDF). (This PDF document is from an external website)
The viewer that is needed to display the pdf document(s) is free and may be downloaded from the Adobe Website.
|