RR2 - A guide to Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit
Working it out
The family
When you claim HB/CTB your local council will need to know who lives with you as part of your family. If you have people living with you who are dependent on you, your applicable amount may be increased. [HB Regs 19-21, CTB Regs 9-11]
The applicable amount is described in detail. It represents the needs of you and your family but it is only relevant if you are not getting Income Support, income-based JSA or the Guarantee Credit of Pension Credit (if you get Income Support, income-based JSA or the Guarantee Credit of Pension Credit, Jobcentre Plus or The Pension Service have already worked out your needs). To understand fully how a change in applicable amount affects your HB/CTB. (A change in applicable amount is not always the same as a change in HB/CTB.)
For the purpose of HB/CTB a family can be:
- a married couple
- or an unmarried couple
- or a lone parent and their dependent children
- or a married or unmarried couple with dependent children.
Your needs as a family will normally be added together when your HB/CTB is worked out.
Partners
If you live together, you and your partner do not have to be married to be assessed as husband and wife. Either you or your partner can claim for both.
People of the same sex who live together do not count as couples for HB/CTB purposes.
If you were legally married to more than one partner under the laws of a country that permits this, then your relationship is called a polygamous marriage. In this case your household consists of you and any partners who normally live with you and to whom you are married.
Children
For HB/CTB a child is described as someone who has not yet reached their 16th birthday. After that, children are classed as young persons up to their 20th birthday as long as they remain at school or in non-advanced education at college. In this guide a young person is treated the same as a child, so the word child may refer to a child or a young person.
A young person is not treated as a child if they are getting Income Support or income-based JSA in their own right.
A child counts as a member of your household only if they normally live with you.
Responsibility for a child
It may sometimes be unclear where a child normally lives (for example, children of separated parents). If your child spends equal amounts of time with both parents and you get the Child Benefit, the child is counted as living with you. If no one is getting Child Benefit for the child, and it is not clear who has primary responsibility for them, it will be for the local council to decide who is responsible. A child can be the responsibility of only one person in any one benefit week.
If you have a daughter who lives with you and has a baby, your local council will have to decide whether she is dependent on you or forms a family of her own. She will not be considered part of your family if she gets Income Support for herself and her baby.
Adoption
Any children you legally adopt are counted as part of your family in the usual way and so are any children for whom you get a custodianship allowance.
Children awaiting adoption
For HB/CTB any child boarded out before being adopted, or placed for adoption, should not be treated as a member of the family of either the natural parent or of the person with whom the child is living before they are adopted.
Children in local authority care
Your child is not a member of your family while they are in local authority care and living away from home. If your child comes to stay with you under supervision, they are again part of the family. If your child comes to visit you to keep in touch, you may be able to count them as part of your family for that time.
Fostering children
When you foster children they do not count as members of your family for HB/CTB purposes.
Children at residential or boarding school
Children who have to stay away from home for their education are only temporarily absent from home, so they are still part of the family.