LHA, for better or for worse!

So only a few more hours till Local Housing Allowance day!

Here's a link to some dwp guidance about it

www.dwp.gov.uk/housingbenefit/lha/evaluation

Also visit http://www.dwp.gov.uk/housingbenefit/lha/evaluation/ if you have a lot of spare time to read the evaluations of the LHA pathfinders.

I've only read a little, because at the moment I'm not THAT bored but some interesting highlights are:

Seventeen per cent of the Pathfinder respondents said that they had decided not to renew a tenancy because the tenant was in receipt of the LHA. This decision was more common in HB Dominant areas (22 per cent) and HB Concentrated areas (24 per cent). When questioned about which aspects of the LHA had prompted the decision, 92 per cent of respondents mentioned that the tenant in question had not paid their rent with the LHA.

Twenty-six per cent of respondents with a vacancy over the past two years and who had heard of HB/LHA said that they had refused a tenant because they were claiming the benefit. There was no variation in this respect across all types of market. The great majority of such respondents had then gone on to let to someone who, in their knowledge, was not in receipt of the benefit.

Pathfinder respondents were asked whether the LHA had overall made them more or less likely to let to tenants in receipt of the benefit, or whether it had made no difference. Forty-eight per cent of respondents said that the LHA had made no difference. Respondents in the HB Concentrated area were the most likely to say that the change had made no difference (57 per cent), whereas 62 per cent of respondents in the HB Dominant markets said that they were less likely to let to claimants as a consequence of the LHA being introduced.

Where respondents said that they were less likely to want to let to people on LHA, the principal reason given in all types of market was the ending of payments to landlords and agents. Experience of rent arrears was the second most cited reason, and fear of rent arrears the third.


So I guess I shall wait and see what happens in my borough. I'm rather interested in how the more 'dubious' landlords who have a number of HMO's are going to react to their tenants who are often rather vulnerable having their rent paid to them direct (although of course in some cases they may still be paid direct and existing claims don't just change to LHA).