What we do

Instead of achieving the objective of empowering tenants to manage their finances, the policy is leading to a reduction in housing supply to tenants receiving LHA and is proving to be wasteful of public money.

We want to see LHA claimants being given the choice of who the payments are made to, so that those who wish the landlord to be paid directly are able to do so. This will provide confidence to landlords to provide rental accommodation to LHA claimants.

We want to see the system modified to ensure LHA claimants are accountable for any rent arrears they build up. This, again, will provide greater confidence to landlords and act to deter any abusers of the system.

We want to see the Government give greater guidance to local authorities to ensure that the vulnerability assessment as part of LHA is made more rigorous and standardised across the country. There needs to be much faster feedback from the local authority back to the landlord to minimise losses to landlords and the eviction of LHA claimants.

It is leading to less security for landlords, an imbalance between the PRS and social sector where LHA rent is paid directly to the Housing Association landlords, and ultimately, a waste of public money.

Tenants who are inexperienced with managing their finances cannot be relied upon to pay their landlords. The BPF survey of 918 landlords found that the average loss per landlord in England was over £1,800, with the average loss per LHA tenancy being over £320. It also found that 55.1% of respondents, regardless of their experience or exposure to LHA, stated that they now refuse to take on LHA tenants due to fears of rent arrears.

Landlords are suffering further because the LHA system does not hold tenants accountable for paying their rent, with some landlords being told by local authorities that it is up to the tenants whether or not to pass on the rent. The system ensures that landlords are only repaid arrears at the very slow rate of £3.05 per week and ultimately allows tenants to escape liability completely by moving out of the property.

The result of this is a worrying shortage in social housing availability around the country.

The Government was further planning to remove the £15 entitlement from 5 April 2010, something we, Shelter and Crisis have all reacted against. In the pre-budget report on 9 December 2009, it was announced that this will be delayed until April 2011.

The Parliament Work and Pensions Committee held a Select Committee inquiry into Local Housing Allowance (LHA) in November. Details of the committee can be found here.

We submitted a response to the inquiry with the assistance of many of our landlord association members and took part in the oral evidence sessions of the DWP Select Committee in January.

We carried out a survey of residential landlords in October 2009 in order to address some of the major issues surrounding LHA. The data gathered has produced much evidence required to reinforce our position in this area.

We also produced a response to the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) consultation exercise on local housing allowance (LHA), entitled 'Supporting people into work: the next stage of Housing Benefit reform’.