ADVISER: Community Housing Advice Partnership backdating success

Our Community Housing Advice Partnership provides expert housing support to advisers working throughout Northern Ireland.  A recent case highlights how working in partnership with a housing specialist can help member agencies achieve the best outcome for clients.

Providing specialist support to resolve housing problems

A partner agency, whose work primarily involves assisting people with disabilities, contacted Housing Rights for advice on how best to assist a vulnerable client who had been issued with a demand for rent arrears.  John, the charity’s client, is a social housing tenant who had been living in his property for over 11 years.  Since suffering a seizure several years ago, John has been housebound. Subsequent to the seizure, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour.  As a result of this tumour he has limited mobility, experiences varying degrees of memory loss and is at high risk of seizure.  John’s caseworker explained that John also had some literacy issues and found it very difficult to understand and respond appropriately to official paperwork.  After John became ill, his brother, Simon, moved in to the property to look after John.  A year into this arrangement, John asked his housing association to create a joint tenancy, giving his brother additional rights in the property.  Once this joint tenancy was created, John and Simon became liable for their own portion of the rent and each had their own Housing Benefit claim to assist with this liability.

Arrears build up after death of one joint tenant

Unfortunately, Simon died at the beginning of this year.  John’s niece notified the housing association and the Housing Executive of her other uncle’s passing and brought copies of the death certificate to each office.  Simon’s Housing Benefit claim ended at the end of January, a few weeks after his death.  In these circumstances, it would be usual for the joint tenancy to be assigned into the sole name of the remaining tenant and for the remaining tenant’s Housing Benefit claim to be reassessed based on the new liability for the rent on the entire tenancy.  However, delays in both the housing association and the Housing Executive’s workflows meant that John’s Housing Benefit claim wasn’t reassessed until June 2016.  By this stage, there was a sizeable arrear on the property as Simon’s portion of the rent had not been paid since his Housing Benefit claim was cancelled in January. 

The housing association wrote to the Housing Executive in May, advising them of the change to the tenancy and requesting a backdate on John’s behalf.  However, the Housing Executive can only authorise a backdated payment where there is good cause for the claimant’s failure to make the request earlier.  In its email to the Housing Executive, the housing association did not make any attempt to show good cause for the failure to claim earlier and simply requested that NIHE consider a backdated payment.  

Investigations and casework lead to positive outcome for client

Our Community Housing Advice Partnership adviser arranged to meet the disability charity worker at John’s house so she could get a good picture of John’s current situation and his needs. While there, John told our adviser that he now receives a minimum of five visits a day from carers who assist him with all aspects of his home and self-care and that his health has deteriorated again since Simon’s death.  After this home visit, our adviser spent some time requesting relevant communication records from both the housing association and the Housing Executive in order to find out what information each agency had and when they had received it.

Citing relevant legislation and caselaw, our adviser wrote to NIHE on John’s behalf requesting a review of the Housing Executive’s decision not to backdate John’s claim and requesting that his claim be backdated to the Monday after Simon’s Housing Benefit claim ended.    In her letter, our adviser pointed out the legal test for determining “good cause” and the actions that John and his family had taken, subsequent to Simon’s death, to notify relevant agencies of this change in the household’s circumstances.

The Housing Executive replied to say that the decision not to backdate the claim had been overturned and to confirm that a backdated payment of £1700 had been paid.  The housing association confirmed that this money had cleared the arrears on the tenancy.  John is now in receipt of full Housing Benefit, which pays the full rent on the property each week, meaning he has one less thing to worry about every day.

Changes to backdating

As of September 2016, the rules around backdated payments have changed.  While we were able to obtain a backdate for a four-month period for John, this would not have been possible under the new system where backdated payments will now be for a maximum period of one month.

As part of our “Essentials of Housing” course programme, we will be running an Introduction to Housing Benefit on the 9 and 16 November.  Members of Housing Rights receive a discount on the price of all our training courses and events.  Our “Essentials” courses are the building blocks for any person providing advice on housing issues in Northern Ireland and are an excellent first step on the road to becoming a confident housing adviser.

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