Discrimination against benefit tenants under the Renters’ Rights Act?

There are certain things that can be proved and verified in advance.
Bedroom entitlement and LHA rates for a start.
If a benefit recipient is working they may have an earnings disregard, especially if they have a child. Then there is the earnings taper. Child support is ignored, spousal maintenance isn’t. All of these income streams can usually be verified by seeing bank statements.
Then there is the mental adjustment that can be made if the property is especially conveniently located. If someone doesn’t have to budget for transport and parking they have more ability to makeup any difference between LHA and real life rent.

Playing with a Benefit calculator is useful to see how the earnings taper works. It also shows just how much someone can earn and still have a small UC entitlement. For a single person this is around £26K per year (depending on LHA for their area). For a single parent with 2 children and a 3 bed entitlement it can be over £60K. The fact someone can be earning enough to lose some of their Child Benefit while still receiving UC is bizarre.

I let to several working UC claimants and have always been able to see quite a bit of proof of income before entering into the tenancy.
The real problem comes when an existing tenant suddenly loses their job. The 5 week wait for a much reduced income is incredibly hard to deal with, especially for people who have always been paid weekly. Getting out of contracts and subscriptions can take months. If the government really wanted to do something useful they would issue a certificate to every new claimant that would require banks to freeze overdraft fees for at least 3 months and all subscriptions to waive cancellation fees.

Reply to the comment left by Jo Westlake at 20/01/2026 – 09:56
… and some still think that the RRA has not turned landlords into unpaid Housing Officers. In reality, it has also turned them into unpaid social workers. It is a socialist’s dream: a housing sector funded by the private sector but run for the benefit of government. Is this now what passes for private enterprise?

Why on earth would we want to get involved in any of this, one landlord I know is in his 80s, no pc and has only recently got a mobile phone – there are a lot like this around the country and I fear that rather than acknowledging their provision of affordable housing they will be financially abused by the authorities.

To be honest its all a load off rubbish if you put your property up for rent you usually have a pool of prospective renters, if you do or do not want to rent to let to a working person who has no pets against someone who doesn’t have either who is going to stop you and for what reason? The prospective renter doesn’t know how many other candidates you have. Are we now being told we cannot have preferences as to who we CAN rent to. And again I keep hearing about the benefit rule have all the insurance policies changed the clauses about tenants having to be in employment? the whole thing is a shambled.

When assessing affordability, we should remember that LHA is regularly frozen for a number of years.

A tenant may be able to afford the rent this year but what about next year and the year after that?

Tread carefully. I will not be offering a property to a tenant that can only just afford the rent.

By freezing LHA, the government is guilty of discrimination IMHO.

Reply to the comment left by Ray Doyle at 20/01/2026 – 12:00
… just wait for the no win no fee lawyers to get in on the act, representing prospective tenants who allege discrimination. Their first step will be to obtain an AVM of the property to assess its fee-earning potential. Their costs will be underwritten and funded by a plethora of legal fee-financing operations, and the redistribution of wealth is thereby perpetuated. Do not forget that you are dealing with a government that regards profits made by the buy-to-let sector as ill-gotten gains. Some local authorities are reportedly signposting tenants to no win no fee lawyers to pursue damages for alleged disrepair. Local authorities do not have to do much more than turn up with a copy of the regulations and a clipboard. Meanwhile, representatives of the property industry were asleep at the wheel while the authorities quietly positioned their chess pieces to finally call checkmate.

Reply to the comment left by Cider Drinker at 20/01/2026 – 12:20
… freezing the LHA and giving benefit tenants an effective right to rent is simply another way of reintroducing the rent controls used under the Rent Act 1977. Those controls destroyed the rental sector until the Housing Act 1988, and even then it took a further decade for the rental market to rebuild the infrastructure needed to support the sector.

Reply to the comment left by Person Of The People at <a href="20/01/2026″ rel=”ugc”>https://www.property118.com/discrimination-against-benefit-tenants-under-the-renters-rights-act/#comment-201545“>20/01/2026 – 12:40I know how the cost of housing benefit could be reduced. Sadly, politicians don’t listen to private landlords so I’ll save my breath.

The government has let us down so much with their discrimination and bullying towards us landlords that I wouldn’t touch benefit tenants with a barge pole. They expect us to take someone on who may or may not pay the rent, they will work, they will get their benefits but we won’t get any rent and they have the full backing of the government. Many landlords cannot afford to get a non-paying tenant out but there’s no-one for us to turn to. I’ve already been had over by a non-paying benefits tenant and the DWP only looks after their interests which is bizarre. The DWP doesn’t make sure your rent is paid. They only protect the tenant’s interests and whether the tenant is breaking the law by not using his benefits for his/her rent money, that doesn’t matter to the DWP or the government so if they cannot come to mature and grown up decisions when it comes to us landlords, and think they can force tenants on benefits on us, then they are terribly mistaken and need to get their heads out of the clouds. This is not a joke and we definitely are not free lodging agents and most of us need our rents to pay our own rent. Stupid government!