Temporary accommodation or not?

Hi All

Would appreciate thoughts.

Client is under Temporary Accommodation team in a different borough. However, her tenancy agreement sets out that it’s an ‘assured shorthold tenancy under Housing Act 1988 and tenancy begins on X date for a week and then weekly until brought to an end’. The tenancy agreement is between her and a ‘social housing provider, managing homes on behalf of the council’, and her overall case is also being managed by them (i.e. potential offer of permanent accommodation etc).

She is claiming UC for the property, and being hit by the benefit cap because it’s not currently understood as TA. When we enquired, we were told that the property she is in: is a property that [social housing provider] has bought and use as Temporary Accommodation and therefore the tenancy type is different, for these handful of properties clients are expected to claim UC to cover the housing costs. Most of their properties are private landlord and therefore covered by HB as normal Temp.

The rent arrears she is in are managed by the TA team in this social housing provider. How do we unpick whether there’s an argument that she could be claiming HB instead? We have not specifically seen the letters which cited the homelessness decision to put her into the accommodation.

Any help welcomed!

Could it be she’s been accepted as being entitled to the full housing duty of the other local authority and to discharge this duty, she’s been placed in her current housing with an AST of at least 12 months’ duration? So although the TA team you’re talking about would ordinarily be placed people in some kind of TA,  they’ve not done that in her case hence why her housing costs are only payable through UC?

Hi Paul. Thanks for your response. I unhelpfully went back and amended a couple of details I had wrong.

It’s definitely a ‘weekly’ AST and they’re understanding it as long term temp (as opposed to discharged into private accommodation) which is what makes it so confusing.

It looks to me as though this comes under the TA definition in Para 3B(3) of Sch 1 of the UC Regs. So I can’t see any reason why it’s being paid as UC housing costs instead of HB. Obviously there could be other facts we’re not aware of, but on the basis of what you’ve said, it does sound like it ought to be HB.

Has the client tried to claim HB? I would suggest that would be an urgent consideration - to make sure there will be HB entitlement if appropriate when it’s all sorted out.

Has she queried it with UC? I wouldn’t expect UC to be very helpful in this respect; as far as I can tell, they generally just go by whether the landlord ticks the box to say it’s temporary accommodation.