Housing benefit

It is important that you tell us about any change that may affect your housing benefit or council tax support entitlement straight away. If the change means that you are entitled to more benefit, and you do not tell us about the change within one month of it happening, you could lose housing benefit.Any delay in telling us about changes which reduce benefit entitlement will result in an overpayment which will be recoverable from you.
We sometimes match the data we hold about your claim with information held by HMRC and the DWP. This is to make sure your entitlement is correct. If there is a discrepancy and you have been overpaid, you will need to pay back any overpaid entitlement.

Report a change of circumstances

Examples of changes you can tell us about with this digital form, please note that this list is not exhaustive.

Income and Capital:

• Changes in any of your income, e.g. wage/self-employed increase, pension increase, etc.
• Increase / decrease in capital of you or your family
• If you start of stop receiving any other income
• Your capital increases above £6000 as a working-age applicant, or £10000 as a pension age applicant
• Changes in savings, investments or property

Household details

• If someone comes to live with you
• If someone living with you moves out
• If circumstances of someone living with you changes (non-dependant increase/decrease, etc)

Accommodation

• Your rent changes
• You or your partner go into hospital
• You go abroad for more than four weeks

Personal Details

• Date a child leaves school or child benefit stopped
• Date if you have another child

Moving to outside of the Peterborough Area

If you are moving outside the area and wish to notify us to end your claim you can use this form - please select 'Other' as the type of change. Please note: the 'Housing Benefit change of circumstances form' cannot be used to notify a change of address within the Peterborough area.

Our Housing benefit BACS form can be used to:

• update your BACS details
• update payment details to receive payment by BACS instead of cheque
• landlords can request payments on behalf of their tenants (including safeguarding requests)
• tenants can request payments to be made to their landlord (including safeguarding requests).

Please note: this online form is only to be completed by the tenant or landlord to which the claim relates.

Housing benefit may be paid for two different homes for a period of up to 4 weeks in certain circumstances where a permanent move from one address to another leaves you with an unavoidable overlap in rent liabilities.

It is important to move to your new home immediately as you may not be entitled to housing benefit for your new address if you delay moving in.

You are not considered to have an overlap in rent liabilities if you move into a residential home or if the move is only temporary.

This form will need to be completed and submitted twice; once by the claimant and subsequently by your former landlord. We can only look at your request to award Housing Benefit on two homes once we have received a form completed by both the claimant and the former landlord.

Please note: The above digital form is for claiming benefit due to an unavoidable overlap on two properties. Changes of address should be notified using the change of address PDF form below.

Housing benefit and council tax support is normally awarded from the Monday following the date on which we receive your application. This form only relates to backdates where a claim has already been made for the current period.

If you have not yet claimed housing benefit or council tax support, you can claim a backdate on the main housing benefit and council tax support online claim form.

The maximum period benefit can be considered is as follows:

• If you are of pensionable age you can apply for a maximum 3 months backdated award
• If you are working age (not of pensionable age) you can apply for 1 month backdated award.

You will need to provide full details, together with any supporting evidence, to explain the reasons you did not apply for Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Support at the correct time.

Sending evidence and documents

If you have evidence or documents to send to us please email them to benefits@peterborough.gov.uk after submitting the claim form, we accept digital photographs, scanned copies or electronic versions.

Please put your benefit claim number in the subject heading (this begins with a '2' and can be found on any letter we send to you) and also mark it “Backdate Application”.

You can download and complete the forms below and return them to the benefits team.