Councils encouraging law breaking

Reply to the comment left by "Romain " at "29/01/2014 - 13:40":

The council can contiinue paying the rent for the current property and for the current tenant since that was the legally binding contract, if the tenant moves to a new property, they will have to cover the new rent themselves until the original tenancy expires and the council start to pay it for them.
It would be the new landlord's task to make sure they are going to get HB from day one, so would need to check the tenant has finished the original one correctly,
Or if they get authorisation from the tenant to speak directly with the LA, the landlord can confirm it directly.

Reply to the comment left by "Jeremy Smith" at "29/01/2014 - 15:25":

Jeremy, You say the council can continue paying at the old property. I agree that is how it should work but do you have any experience of them doing this and if so how did you persuade them as in my experience they just pay for where the tenant says they are now living. Of course, if the tenant never bothers to give notice then the original tenancy will never expire!

As mentioned, I think housing benefits are specifically intended to cover accomodation costs, so a person would not even be entitled to payments for a property they don't live at even if they had a valid tenancy on it (which is that person's right and responsibility).

The Housing Benefit Act 2006 states that HB is an allowance for the rent payments that "a person is liable to make in respect of the dwelling which he occupies as his home".
So I would think that if a tenant vacates a property for which he receives HB, he must notify the council that he has left as his entitlement to HB for that property has ceased.

I am not expert on this all, so that's just my 2p.

That being said, if HB is paid directly to landlord perhaps council could inform him that payments will stop as soon as tenant contacts them.

We have raised a number of complaints over this with Hull City Council and stated they are failing to act professionally by taking tenants out of our properties within 1 week without notice. This often leaves the tenant with unpaid debts and we believe is irresponsible behaviour by a social landlord.

Hi, my name is Alan, I was the one to start this campaign . My argument is that councils should not be using public money to harass, intimidate, and abuse landlords, we should not be seen as the enemy, I have just received a letter from our council which is full of obvious venom, and bias against me as a landlord, I already have verbally abused the author in reply and he has now backed down, but the damage has been done in that he got the facts wrong, and made false accusations which I will not take, I am writing back to make a formal complaint about him and about the policy which I have pointed out just causes more problems when we stop taking any benefit funded tenants. I believe we need to make this situation public and embarrass them. Any help or ideas welcome.

Alan Loughlin

Reply to the comment left by "Ray Davison" at "29/01/2014 - 13:58":

Good point Ray and I shall make the point formally by way of complaint if necessary.

Vanessa observes that CAB give the same advice. The Housing Dept "officer" I spoke with told me this was the case.

Romain observes that the reason behind this advice may be to absolve, or at least delay, the need for them to house the homeless. I made this point in my telephone conversation which was not well received.

Overall though it's a disgrace. Most tenants are OK and will honour the SHT agreement they have entered into. There will be some though who while basically OK having had this idea put into their heads by a Council, rather than a mate in the pub, will maybe think about doing it? While tenants have rights (set out in the Sec 21 notice anyway so why does anybody need to reinforce them?) for a body like a Council to tell them it is an option even worth considering is basically condoning doing something totally wrong if not illegal.

Reply to the comment left by "Julie Ford" at "29/01/2014 - 12:36":

they are telling them to ignore the contract, ignore all notices to pay or quit, and then help them frustrate the legal process by devious, suspect methods, all this being done with our money.

Reply to the comment left by "Ray Davison" at "29/01/2014 - 16:46":

Hi Ray,

What I was meaning, in reply to Romain, was that since the tenant and council have a relationship, ie the council is paying for their tenancy, the council should still honour the tenancy agreement until the end of the tenancy,
so, should the tenant move somewhere else, the council should not pay the new landlord, they should continue to pay the original landlord and tell the tenant that they should remain in the original property until the tenancy has ended.
A bit like their mum and dad were paying the rent, it should be no different.

That's how it would work in the PRS and a private tenant and it should be the same with the council.
The council should be held to account, as a partner in the tenancy agreement.

Someone should take them to court for not paying rent for their tenant with whom they have a relationship through the tenancy agreement.

How about someone making some caselaw in this situation ?
- I know-not about law, tell me if this is not possible - I'm sure you will !!

I have been twice the victim of these callous council policy on rehousing social tenants, that is exactly what they tell their benefit tenants to do stay put until bailiffs are sent, then they rehouse these irresponsible tenants, irresponsible because they break benefit rules and then their housing benefit is taken aways, and it is us the landlords who suffer income loss, we still have to meet our mortgage repayments on time.

It is about time that we landlords stopped taking any housing benefit tenants, this way the local councils will be overwhelmed and unless they can guarantee rent throughout the occupation of their social tenants, we simply don't rent them out our property, I have already told the council that next time I will not be taking on any Housing Benefit , it is absolutely disgusting that Councils will not rehouse those tenantas served with a notice until the matter takes its full course through courts and bailiffs. Modern day scam by Authorities.

I don't about Council's massaging figures, but I have several examples where the council have taken the word of the tenant over the landlord resulting in housing benefit being stopped before the tenant actually vacates the property. there is also one example where a tenant was rehoused whilst they had a further month to go on there agreement and no payments were made to us to compensate. to add insult to injury they then charge the council tax for that period as well. I see no reason why the council cannot liaise with landlords/agents to ensure the correct dates are agreed upon.