Asked by: Jim Dobbin (Labour (Co-op) - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will estimate the number of cases of a local authority paying a landlord directly because a tenant who receives universal credit was more than eight weeks behind on rent payments; and what steps his Department has taken to (a) encourage tenants in receipt of universal credit to pay rent on time and (b) tackle repeated non-payment of rent by universal credit claimants.
Answered by Steve Webb
Housing payments are not administered by Local Authorities under Universal Credit. All claimants in Universal Credit are offered practical help and advice on budgeting and money management early on in their claim alongside being advised of their responsibility to pay rent to their landlords. We make an initial judgement on each claim as to whether the claimant is at risk of default. If so we can put them on managed payments immediately. Any representations received from the landlord will be taken into account when reaching this judgement.
If it is decided to pay the rent direct to the claimant then we have two safeguards in place. First, we will review our initial decision if we are advised that arrears have reached the equivalent of one month's rent. Second, if direct payments have continued, we will move to payment to the landlord if we are advised that arrears have reached the equivalent of two months' rent.
Asked by: Jim Dobbin (Labour (Co-op) - Heywood and Middleton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the effect of universal credit on landlords who have claimants as tenants; what the results were of the direct payment demonstration projects on the effect of paying housing benefit direct to tenants; and if he will reduce the two calendar month rent arrears trigger point before a landlord can go directly to his Department for direct payment.
Answered by Steve Webb
Interim evaluation from the first 6 months of the Direct Payment Demonstration Projects was published in December 2013 and can be found at:
DWP has developed three levels of safeguards for tenants and landlords based on findings from the Direct Payment Demonstration Projects and continuous improvements through our test and learn approach in live service.
We make an initial judgement on each claim as to whether the claimant is at risk of default and if so, we can put them on managed payments immediately. In the majority of cases Direct Payments will apply and we have two safeguards in place; (1) We will review the initial decision if we are advised that arrears have reached the equivalent of one months rent. (2) We will move to payment to the landlord if we are advised that arrears have reached the equivalent of two months rent.