Full suspension of all income affected benefits during "Change of Circumstance"

[Darfyddi]

Hi all,

 

This happened to us in October/November last year but a recent event has made me bring it up with my landlord so I thought I would pop by here to:

 

Earlyish October 2012 My wife had a university grant so we notified ESA and LA - both of which immediatly susspend our claims and stopped all payments. We were very lucky that I made sure we didn't start this hassle until about 3 days before the grant was paid to my wife as we knew the DWP are absolute @#!&%@$s but it surprised me that even our HB and CTB were stopped too. We live in the Coventry area and I was wondering if this is happening to anyone else in other parts of the country?

 

About a month into this process we received a lovely letter from Whitefriars notifying us of "Notice to Seek Possesion" - you can imagine how this made us feel, it is scary to think that I was unable to protect my disabled wife or our baby. After a letter or two, many phone calls and some trips to the landlords office I was feeling a bit more confidant that we would be ok as we were told (though not in writing) that proceedings to evict would be put on hold until further information came in from LA .

 

After all this hassle we finally got a letter through from LA stating that we were still entitled to full HB & CTB but I am a little bit greyer and balder and my wifes medication has had to be increased (this 2nd bit is true unfortunately). It seems absurd to me that the system has changed now so that no matter what the change of circumsance is (I think) all the payments are stopped and we are threatened with eviction.

[dpick]

I think this could be dependent on where you live I had a change of circumstances in December (becoming a pensioner) while my change over to state pension etc went smoothly my LA suspended my CT and housing benefit's. They also informed my landlord that my housing benefit was suspended but did inform them that it was due to change of circumstances and should be reapplied with back money in a few weeks.

 

They notified me in the last week that my CT and housing benefit were reinstated back to the date of suspension.

 

dpick

[Feebee_71]

Sadly its the same in lots of areas - I live within the M25 and, when I changed from cont based JSA to income based, the dwp simply told my landlord (local housing association) that I had 'become no longer eligible' so they suspended my claim - even though it was a formality because the transfer went through quite quickly!!

 

Feebee_71

[Darfyddi]

It looks like some LA are good at informing landlords/housing associations about the temporary change - hopefully Coventry is a rare case where the housing association starts proceedings for eviction just becuase of change of circumstances.