We work with Michael Patterson who has approaching 20 years’ experience in working with enhanced Housing Benefit and who was responsible for devising the term “intensive housing management”.
Michael’s approach has the distinction of being collaborative. When representing supported housing providers Michael maintains a non-adversarial approach to Revenues and Benefits colleagues, a forensic approach to justifying the basis of an enhanced Housing Benefit claim and a concern to enable local authorities to fully recover the enhanced Housing Benefit they pay via their subsidy claim to the DWP. This is often achieved via the Exempt Accommodation Project.
We have up to the minute knowledge of enhanced Housing Benefit matters, for example, the DWP Housing Benefit Guidance for Supported Housing Claims. We use a particular spreadsheet model and a very forensic approach that breaks down an enhanced Housing Benefit claim to the penny per week per resident across the entire basis of claim. This is helpful to both supported housing providers and to Revenues and Benefits, both of whom need an audit trail to justify the level of claim.
Our fees for this work are usually factored into the enhanced Housing Benefit claims we develop, so the process is usually cost-neutral to our clients.
If you’re a local authority approved supported housing provider that needs help with enhanced Housing Benefit claims, please contact us. Our costs are transparently included within the revised enhanced Housing Benefit claims we devise and submit, so our services are effectively cost-neutral.
Please note that we do not work on enhanced Housing Benefit claims with agencies that do not have local authority approval to operate as supported housing providers. We do not assist recently established supported housing providers to gain approval from local authorities to operate as supported housing providers.
Many local authorities are struggling with subsidy loss as a consequence of enhanced Housing Benefit claims from supported housing providers where the landlord isn’t a registered provider. In such circumstances local authorities can only reclaim 60% of the difference between the appropriate LHA amount and the amount of the claim. In order to help mitigate local authority subsidy loss we work with the Exempt Accommodation Project, which has become very successful with several hundred units of accommodation in management and half a dozen registered provider partners, many of them YMCAs.
If you want help with enhanced Housing Benefit claims or you work for a local authority and are seeking a solution to subsidy loss, please contact us by email or on 0800772 0065/07577 200300.