Help with Housing Costs: Advising on Housing Benefit, Universal Credit and Pension Credit, 2024/25

This new guide gives the rules for help with personal housing costs available to social housing tenants, private tenants, home owners and share owners.

The guide combines in one volume the rules about universal credit, housing benefit, state pension credit, support for mortgage interest and council tax rebates. It covers both working age and pension age claims and is designed for easy use by renters, owners, local councils, social landlords, welfare and finance advisers, tribunal members and housing professionals throughout Great Britain.

This edition explains the new rules for help with housing costs starting from April 2024. It gives full details for:

• Who can get universal credit or housing benefit towards rent in social and private housing
• How and when people are transferred from housing benefit and other legacy benefits to universal credit
• Who can get transitional protection
• Help for renters, owners and shared owners with service charges
• Which payments housing benefit meets for people in supported housing and temporary accommodation
• How the local housing allowance works for private renters
• The rules about accommodation size (bedroom tax), temporary absences and getting benefit on two homes
• The two-child limit and the benefit cap, and who is exempt from them
• How benefit is calculated and how much non-dependants are expected to contribute
• Which housing costs can be met by state pension credit DWP support for mortgage interest for owners and share owners
• Who is liable for council tax and who qualifies for exemptions, discounts and disability reductions
• Who can get council tax rebates and how local councils in England and Wales can vary the rules Discretionary housing payments
• When claims are made to the DWP and when they are made to the council 
• When housing costs can be paid directly to landlords and mortgage lenders
• How to appeal about decisions made by the council or the DWP
• The rules for migrants and recent arrivals