| Notes about "eligible" rent » |
| Council and Housing Association Tenants |
| If you are a Council tenant or Housing Association tenant your "eligible rent" in this calculation will normally be same as the rent you pay to the Council or Housing Association - although it will not include any optional service charges. |
| Private Tenants |
| If you or you partner are Private Tenants your "eligible rent" in this calculation will be decided using the Local Housing Allowance (LHA for short). For more information about this click here: »LHA Information |
| Private Tenants under 35 |
| If you are private tenant who is: |
| single | in good health | aged under 35 | with no children… |
| your rent in the HB calculation also uses the LHA (see LHA link above) but is restricted to the "Shared Room Rate" for your area. |
| Notes about partners » |
| "Partners" means two people of the same or opposite sex who live together in a couple relationship. It makes no difference whether you are married, unmarried, civil partners or not. |
| Notes about Baby Rate Tax Credits » |
| Before April 2011,
many benefits included an extra amount if you had a baby aged
less than 1 year. Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and Child
Tax Credit (amongst others) all included this additional payment. From April 2011 this extra amount was abolished - so new claims from that date no longer include it. The situation is a little different with Child Tax Credit (CTC) though. CTC claims are not all updated immediately in April. Those people who already get CTC can find it takes months for their claims to be reassessed. For this reason there will be many people who continue to get the additional "baby" payment in their CTC past April 2011. If you were getting the "baby addition" of CTC before April, and are still getting it now, then you will also carry on getting the matching allowance in Housing Benefit. You won't get any extra Housing Benefit as a result because the CTC and Housing Benefit addition cancel each other out. However, if you get this question wrong the Housing Benefit Calculator will show the wrong result. You might need to check your most recent Tax Credits Award letter. If you have children, your award letter will show the following amount in any case: » Child Tax Credit Family element - £545 If you are still getting the "baby addition" then your award letter will also show: » Family element, baby addition - £545 If you are still getting the baby addition then you should answer "Yes" to the question on the calculator page. |