UC47 rejected but tenant consistently in arrears?

Reply to the comment left by Clint at 26/04/2020 - 18:31
You sound about as unlucky as me Clint. I totally gave up in the end.
I was owed nearly 4K by 2 UC tenants, bare in mind rents near me are still under £400pcm. I tried everything and didn't get a penny.
A harsh lesson to learn but I will not deal with UC tenants at all now.
I wish you luck.

Clint

I’ve been pursuing APA complaints with DWP for the past 6 years. Initially, I received compensation for its staffs’ maladministration. But as the numbers of complaints increased, DWP put the brakes on.

In 2015 I secured agreement with DWP’s Directorate, that when an APA request was submitted its staff would immediately suspend payment of the housing costs element, pending a decision on the merits of my landlord client’s application. DWP promptly reneged on this.

I subsequently pursued 20+ complaints to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE). Each complaint took 2 years to complete. Everyone so far has resulted in ICE upholding our complaints but have refused compensation on the basis the landlord could sue their tenant in court. An outcome which we didn’t anticipate as similar complaints against council maladministration secured up to £7000 compensation for rental loss.

On the upside, our complaints forced DWP to withdraw its use of “explicit consent” in the APA process with effect from December 2017. It helped produce the April 2018 relaxation allowing APAs from the first month, where at the point of migration from LHA to UC payment was being made to the landlord.

Last year, DWP invited me to nominate a number of PRS landlords to pilot a replacement for the UC 47 form. The pilot has worked exceptionally well overall, and was about to be rolled out from Easter but has been delayed by the COVID crisis. Caridon are one of my clients, so if you speak to Sherrelle she’ll explain how it works.

The process Ive outlined in my earlier posts invariably works, especially if you apply early; follow things up with the Practice or District Manager, no more than 10 days later, in writing (not phone calls) and where necessary, by further escalation to DWP’s hierarchy.

Caridon, and a number of my other clients, were all following this protocol and it significantly reduced their previous level of losses. Sherrelle has been successfully pursuing exactly this same line.

So, despite your experiences, I would encourage every PRS landlord to pursue this course of action until the PRS portal is rolled out, replacing need for UC 47’s.

Bill

An update! RESULT! Just had a call back from DWP to state that (having send off a complaint as Bill suggested to the Regional Case Manager only 3 days ago), my request has been reviewed and original rejection reply has been overturned, so a direct managed payment for the total of the rent arrears will be instigated. Not only that, having given evidence to show that the tenant has done this persistently, the DWP are going to put a flag on the tenant/property, so any further request of the same will be automatically agreed. OMG! I nearly fell off my chair! Thanks Bill - my today, hero!

Reply to the comment left by WP at 29/04/2020 - 12:10
Result! What stars!

Reply to the comment left by WP at 29/04/2020 - 12:10
Well done!

Reply to the comment left by WP at 29/04/2020 - 12:10
Awesome! It's great when Landlords pool together and share knowledge / give advice and it works for the greater good 😉

Reply to the comment left by Bill irvine at 26/04/2020 - 19:59
Thanks, Bill, for that detailed explanation which for some reason, I had totally missed until now whilst scheming through the posts once again. I was already aware of your hard work in this area which I am sure has helped many.
Following on from my last post, after several more very long waits on calls to UC, I managed to get information which normally is not given out. The person I spoke to, told me she was new and seemed very sympathetic, and updated me and gave me information which, I am sure would not normally have been given out by UC.
I was informed that one of the tenants, had asked for the payment to be made directly to herself, and another who was being evicted and ordered to leave by the courts just before the lockdown, had asked for the rent to be paid to herself as well.
I had phoned UC regarding the tenant who was ordered to leave on an earlier occasion and was told that they could not give me any further information and I should contact the tenant. Having tried all means of contacting the tenant, and having no response, I had assumed that she left as she was ordered to do so. I have now, just filled another UC47 form for this tenant and submitted it yesterday.
The second tenant that I mentioned in my last post had her rent stopped as her claim was cancelled as she did not respond to something from DWP. After the claim was reopened, UC started paying the rent to this tenant although, apparently, she requested that it was paid to the Landlord. She, however, did not pass the rent on to me.
So, I have now had three tenants rents paid to themselves for February, March and April in each case and have lost a huge sum of money. How can any sane government allow this to happen?

Is it right, that the tenant can ask for the rent to be paid to themselves after a UC47 has been filled in, in the past and payments are already being made to the landlord? This is completely absurd and daylight robbery assisted by the government who already support these people with taxpayer’s money.

Reply to the comment left by Clint at 30/04/2020 - 20:41
Hi Clint,

You asked - "Is it right, that the tenant can ask for the rent to be paid to themselves after a UC47 has been completed, and payments are already being made to the landlord?"

Just as you, as landlord, have the right to request redirection of the "Housing Costs Element" (HCE), by submitting a UC 47, the tenant can equally ask for it to be paid to him/her. However, before agreeing to that, he/she should be required to justify such a move e.g. they've cleared their earlier rent arrears which led to the landlord becoming "payee" in the first instance.

You, as landlord, should also be given the opportunity to question or challenge the grounds of their request. In LHA situations like this, the landlord, has rights as a "person affected". There is also a body of caselaw and, would you believe, DWP guidance to councils, which explains, where a tenant asks for redirection, the LHA award should firstly be suspended, pending a decision on the merits of the tenant's application, but only after the landlord has been offered the chance to give his/her tuppence worth.

If the Council doesn't follow this process and simply pays the money to the tenant, without formally making a decision, notifying both parties, giving each the right of appeal, the payment to the tenant should be considered "unlawful". This is because an earleir "decision" had been made to pay the landlord and that has never been "superseded" or "revised".

The Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) aware of the LHA rules, DWP guidance & Upper-tier caselaw invariably awards compensation where councils fail. I secured £7,000 in one case, where the Council paid this sum to a single parent, when it had already previously paid the landlord. The good lady went to Harrods and spent the £7000 knowingshe had no entitlement. That included a wee holiday abroad of course!

In my many exchanges with DWP hierarchy on this topic, I have repeatedly made argument that the LHA scheme rules should be followed by DWP staff. In 2015, its Directorate actually agreed to suspend payment of the "housing costs element", on receipt of a landlord's UC 47 application and actually paid a "special payment" to a few of my Housing Association clients where it failed to comply. But as the numbers of cases increased, it later reneged, stating there was no power to suspend simply the HCE. Yet its own internal guidance states, at paragraphs A4320/1 of DWP’s “Decision Maker’s Guidance” -

“The DM may suspend the payment of benefit immediately, either wholly or in part, where a question arises about the claimant’s entitlement to benefit or some component part of it”. Housing costs are clearly a component of the award. The Guidance, in this case, is based on Regulation 58 of the UC (Claims & Payments) Regulations. So, DWP has no excuse, for not following LHA practice.

Indeed, in a complaint I made, on behalf of a PR landlord client, to the Independent Case Examiner (ICE) I make similar observations on this topic:

"When DWP launched its Universal Credit’s APA scheme it said it was designed to protect the interests of the tenant from accruing rent arrears, being evicted and being exposed to the vagaries of homelessness. In a House of Commons publication dated December 2017 http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN06547/SN06547.pdf it states:
“The current version of the guidance on APAs, Universal Credit, Alternative Payment Arrangements, was updated in November 2017. Some of the safeguards the DWP has developed to mitigate potential risks to tenancies and landlords' income streams resemble current arrangements within Housing Benefit for claimants living in the private rented sector."

In recent exchanges with DWP's management, I have continued to press the need to:

a) Acknowledge every APA (UC 47) request made by a landlord; and
b) Immediately suspend payments of the HCE, pending a decision of the Landlords' application, accepting the tenant will be invited to comment; and
c) Formally, notify landlords of the outcome, and provide some explanation if the application is rejected; and
d) If a decision ids made to make the landlord "payee" and receive payments on his/her tenant's behalf, and the tenant applies for redirection, there should be no change to the APA arrangement, without some proper consultation with the landlord, including being able to provide evidence (e.g. rent statements).

The above process would mimic what happens with LHA; would put a stop to DWP staff simply redirecting payments to tenants on a whim; avoid the repeated misuse of funds (HCE) designed to extinguish or reduce the tenant's rent liability; minimise rent arrears; and prevent the need for recovery action, including evictions.

Every landlord invested in property accommodating UC tenants should make similar demands. If they do, DWP just might change its currentmalpractices.

Bill

Thanks once again for providing a very concise explanation in respect of my predicament.
I have for many years been renting to tenants who have been on “Housing Benefit” and had acquired great knowledge on how the system operated and would say that it was by far fairer system than that operated by DWP. At least with the “Housing Benefit” system, Landlords had the right to appeal against decisions made by the council. I have also been in about three situations, where rents were wrongly paid to the tenants, and on appeal had the monies reimbursed to me. Fortunately, I never needed to go to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Having read your what you have outlined, it appears that there is no real legal way of recovering the money that I have lost, and the way forward which is more of a campaign is to write to DWP requesting that in future they suspend payments until the claims by either party are justified. This is something that I state on each of my managed and APA claim when I send in a UC47 form. I always include the sentence “Please contact me if further investigation is required however, in the meantime if necessary, freeze the payments and do not pay the tenant” along with reasons why.
I generally feel that writing to the Director General is a waste of time having done so in the past, and having had my MP write to the DG as well where, after lengthy correspondence got a letter informing me what I should do, which was something that I had done in the first place.
I now intend to write to my MP regarding these three cases, strongly stating that the rental element of UC payment should be paid directly to the Landlord in order to avoid such situations. I know that me complaining on my own will not help but hopefully more Landlords will also complain to their MPs.
The losses that I have had to bear are for the three stated cases however, since UC came into being, I have had many such ridiculous losses.
If there is case law that is applicable to the councils, surely the same law would apply to DWP would it not? If this is the case, perhaps DWP should legally be taken to court where, there is a possibility, funds could be raised for this purpose through crowd funding. I am sure there will have been a multitude of cases where this has happened. What are your views on this?

Reply to the comment left by Clint at 02/05/2020 - 23:56
Personally I will not even consider a tenant who is dependent on state funding. I would rather have no tenant at all.