If you are claiming Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Reduction, you must tell us immediately about any change in your circumstances, as it may affect the amount of benefit you are entitled to receive.
It is an offence not to tell us about any change in your circumstances that affects your benefit.
What changes do we need to know about?
You must tell us about any changes that affect you or anyone living in your household, including :
Benefit changes
- You start to receive or have a change in Pension Credit
- You start to receive, stop receiving, or have a change in your state benefits, including Universal Credit and New Style Jobseekers Allowance
- Employment and Support Allowance stops.
Changes to your home or household
- You move home, or someone moves into or out of your home
- Your rent changes
- Someone starts or stops receiving Carer’s Allowance for looking after you
- You start receiving care from a non-resident overnight carer who uses one of your bedrooms
- You need one of your bedrooms for a child or partner who cannot share due to a disability
- You were awarded an additional bedroom in your Housing Benefit calculation and no longer need it
- You enter into a civil partnership
- You live in supported accommodation and no longer require support
- Anyone in your household is temporarily absent from your home for 4 weeks or longer (for example, going abroad).
Employment, income and savings
- You start work, change jobs, or your wages increase or decrease
- Your private pension increases or decrease
- Your savings increase or decrease
- The income of other adults in your home changes.
Children and childcare
- Your childcare hours or costs change
- You start or stop receiving Child Benefit for any child living with you.
This is not an exhaustive list.
What happens if you don’t tell us about a change?
If you do not tell us about a change that affects your claim:
- You may receive too much benefit, which you will have to pay back, or
- You may receive less benefit than you are entitled to.
We will usually suspend your claim when we have been told about a change. This helps us to prevent overpayments.
We usually need more information to reassess your claim and remove the suspension. If we write to you, you must reply within one month of the date on the letter or form for Housing Benefit, or within 21 days for Council Tax Reduction.
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 claim |