Housing Benefit – Information for local authorities
Targeted mainly at local authority (LA) staff, this site aims to be the definitive source of information, guidance and good practice on:
- Housing Benefit (HB) – including the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) arrangements
- Council Tax Benefit (CTB)
Other HB practitioners, advisers and landlords should also find the site useful.
Information for LA staff about Universal Credit can also be found here:
Housing Benefit RSS feed | What is RSS?
Site structure
Based on the LA Omnibus survey in 2007 we’ve made the changes our LA customers wanted, which were to: provide a better site structure; improve navigation; review all the content; and make the site more user friendly.
This new look site is made up of the following sections and sub-sections:
- HB - What's new
- User communications
- HB Direct/More Direct
- HB/CTB Circulars
- HB/CTB Bulletins
- HBDMS Newsletters
- Publicity materials
- Claims processing
- Operational manuals
- Claims guidance
- Local Housing Allowance (LHA)
- Closer working with DWP
- HB Information Flows Programme
- Security
- Data matching HB/CTB records with Credit Reference Agency data
- Voice Risk Analysis (VRA)
- Error awareness
- Right Benefit Toolkit
- Performance and good practice
- HB/CTB Good Practice Guide
- Data sharing: guidance for local authorities
- HB/CTB performance statistics
- Subsidy guidance manuals
- HB/CTB Caseload Statistics
- HoBOD (Housing Benefit Operational Database) – LA level statistics
- FAQs
- LA consultation groups
- Local Authority Associations (LAAs) Steering Group
- Practitioners Operations Group (POG)
- Security Operation Group (SOG)
- HB contacts
- Useful links
Material from the old Housing Benefit website
If you need to refer to documents from the old site, then we have created a reference archive where you can identify and request those documents. Visit our Publications archive for more information.
