Universal Credit Refusing Direct Payments?

Direct payments are not necessarily mandatory if the tenant is in 2 months arrears I am afraid.

Sounds more to it than meets the eye. If they have no UC record of the tenant they wont set up anything or talk to you about it.

is the tenant still in the property?

I had this - the tenant just left my property set up elsewhere, cancelled his rent to me then moving payment to his new claim address. I had no idea until the rent that months wasn't paid directly to me as it always was. DWP did nothing to help. All tenant led and if he did it then any rent owing then I have to chase him direct. They complied with all their requirements and that's all they care about. Didn't care at all that he was a drink and drug addict and a vulnerable adult who met the Tier 1 & 2 criteria for direct payments! DP's were set up with his AND DWP's agreement as a result.
You can't request arrears when a UC claim has been cancelled.
Others may have more advice.

I have the same circumstances as you and received the exact same response, word for word.
I have no idea what to make of it either, I can only assume they have contacted the tenant who has denied being 2 months in arrears. I will try again next month.
I paid for Christmas for 3 of my tenants last year, well the rent did! December is always a bad month.

contact mp?

I can confirm that the tenants are still living there. I have also spoken with NRLA specialist UC consultant who has advised me to lodge a stage 1 complaint with my local job centre plus service leader ( link below ) who must now look into this. He explained that the first thing UC do upon recieving at APA is to check with the claimant that it is in fact the case that they are 2 months in arrears. I strongly suspect they have done this and the tenants have simply lied.
I cannot help but notice that the situation in my area for unemployed sofa surfers is getting worse and worse due to enormous demand from working tenants. Just this week we have had 30 + applications for a flat in the town centre. 20 of which were desperate UC claimants below 35 years old. Given this experience I strongly suspect that these applications will be finding their way into the waste paper bin.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-partnership-opportunities-with-jobcentre-plus/jobcentre-plus-district-managers-contacts-for-partnership-opportunities

Reply to the comment left by terry sullivan at 22/01/2021 - 19:36
The tenants beat me to it !. They contacted our local MP months ago asking for help obtaining a council property, who, being renowned for his views on these types of people, showed little interest. After that didn't work, wouldn't you know it, they had environmental health visit with myself present. During this visit they openly admitted that they only booked the visit in an attempt to get a council flat !. Once the environmental health officer explained the situation to them and told them she felt that she had been used and time wasted, we were all shown the door and a complaint lodged with the council that myself and the officer were conspiring against them !!. You could not make this stuff up

in boris's britain--no need to make it up

is boris mad or bad?

ps i am a natural Conservative ie i vote for none of mainstream parties

To OP - I'm afraid that reply is a generic standard reply when contacting UC. They are a nightmare to deal with.
If you go onto the Gov.Uk Universal Credit website they include a list of UC Partnership Managers, you will be better placed emailing one of them local to your area explaining your situation. However in the meantime there is also an online form on tge website in which you can complete to apply directly to UC for direct payments. You can fill out the details on the form and attach the AST and a rent statement.
You should receive confirmation that theyve receivedthe form...then just keep chasing. Let us now how you get on. Good luck.

To Terry Sullivan - there are many incompetences that can be thrown at the current Boris government but UC is not one of them. This was Cameron's balls up and then cut the funds with Osbourne for rolling it out properly. It was his great idea of empowering people with there own finances but forgot that there were addicts on benefits aswell as people incapable of managing their own finances, especially when handed out to them! What an idiotic idea that was. It then took a lot of campaigning to implement rental payments to be made direct to the landlord for the cases with vulnerable people/tenants.
The power all lies with the claimant now.

Reply to the comment left by Nathan at 22/01/2021 - 22:42
But the power lies with the landlords if we all refuse to let to benefit tenants - Male and Female Shelter please note - not that I would ever do such a thing.
All tenants welcome with five weeks deposit, a month's rent in advance and a property owning and working guarantor. Payment by standing order from the tenant's personal bank account is mandatory,

Unbelievable in't it, UC won't tell us anything. If they just said not claiming UC, we could at least not go down that path.
I put this on a similar post:

As u probably know, this is online link for arrears.
https://directpayment.universal-credit.service.gov.uk/questions/type-of-payment

If u been refused once, do again. It's a shambles how they have no one to talk to Landlords, no contact for us.
I'd take your notices into the Job Centre, ask what they can do. It's getting worse too.

We need to be making this more public cause it's cases exactly like yours that's contributing massively to the homeless problem.

Try Sherrelle at Caridon Solutions, she may be able to get it for u on No win no fee.
https://www.caridonlandlordsolutions.co.uk/ Tel: 020 3728 9937

And Bill Irvine's site https://universalcreditadvice.com/