Housing Services in Bexley

Housing Benefit

Information for Landlords

We believe that landlords are an important stakeholder in the service that we provide. We aim to work with landlords to ensure that they receive payment promptly and to ensure that overpayments are minimised. In return we ask landlords to respect our obligations towards claimant confidentiality and the data protection act when they make enquiries about their tenants.

Landlord Direct

We can pay your tenant's housing benefit entitlement directly to yourself provided your tenant agrees or if they are more than 8 weeks in arrears with their rent payments.

Please note that if you accept direct payment form us we may require you to pay back money if your tenant receives housing benefit to which they are not entitled. For more details see Recovery of Overpayments, below.

In order to have the rent paid directly your tenant will need to agree on the benefits application form to have the rent paid to you. If the tenant is 8 weeks or more in arrears with the rent you must write in to the Benefits Office to confirm this.

Reporting a Tenant Moving Out

If your tenant has vacated your property, click here to access the form (5KB, PDF file)

Please return the completed form to:

Benefit Office
PO Box 713
Erith
Kent
DA8 1UN

Recovery of Overpayments

When we pay Housing Benefit directly to a Landlord and their tenant's entitlement to Housing Benefit changes we may ask the Landlord to repay the money which has been overpaid.

Each case is decided on its merits. If we decide that it is appropriate to recover the money from the Landlord we will invoice them. The invoice will show the period, in which the overpayment occurred, the name of the tenant and the amount of overpayment. If a Landlord has difficulty repaying the money our payments team will be happy to negotiate repayment by instalment.

If a Landlord fails to make repayments of overpaid Housing Benefit we can recover outstanding payments from any future payments of Housing Benefit due to be paid to the Landlord. We are reluctant to recover overpayments in this way but occasionally we are forced to do so. If we do invoke these powers it means that for each tenant in respect of whom Housing Benefit is being paid the amount of their entitlement will be offset against the overpayment.

In these cases the Landlord must reduce the tenant's rent liability by the full value of their Housing benefit entitlement. The Landlord is not entitled to seek to recover the monies from their tenant.

The legislation that enables this is contained within Section 16 of the Social Security Administration Act 1997.