Doncaster Council

Information and evidence

When you make a claim for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, you should give us all the information and proof we need with your claim if you can. Our claim form tells you what information and proof we need. If you receive Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance or Pension Credit (Guarantee), we have to check this with Social Security's records.

If we need more information from you, we will normally write to you about this within seven days of receiving your claim. If you give us all the information we need when you make your claim, we aim to deal with your claim within 7 days. But, if we have to ask you for information, or check your income with Social Security's records, we aim to deal with your claim within 23 days.

Please help us improve our performance by giving us all the information and proof we need when you make your claim. If you cannot give us all the information we need straight away, you should still send us your claim with as much information as possible. Don't delay your claim by holding on to it until you have all the information or you may lose benefit.

Paying you the right benefit

We aim to pay you the right amount of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit. Every week we check a sample of the claims we deal with to make sure we have paid the correct benefit.

Out of a sample of 500 cases we checked between April 2007 and March 2008, our accuracy rate was 99%

Your benefit decision

When we have dealt with your claim, we will write and tell you:

• How much benefit you will get;
• When your benefit will start from;
• How long we will pay you for;
• What information we have used to work out your benefit, for example, what income and savings we have used;
• What you should do if you think your benefit is wrong.

You will normally get our letter within seven days of the date we dealt with your claim.

Paying your benefit

If you pay rent to the council, we will pay your Housing Benefit into the rent account you have with St Leger Homes (formerly the Housing Department).

If you pay rent to a private landlord, we will normally pay your Housing Benefit every four weeks.

• If your claim is being paid under the Local Housing Allowance rules, (introduced on 7 April 2008) we will usually pay your Housing Benefit to you. Use the link Local Housing Allowance in the ‘More Information’ column on the left for more details about Local Housing Allowance.
• If your claim is not being paid under the Local Housing Allowance rules, we can send the payments to you or your landlord, depending on whom you have asked us to pay and your circumstances.

We can pay Housing Benefit by cheque or direct to a bank account (by BACS).

If you pay Council Tax, we will pay your Council Tax Benefit into your Council Tax account.

Changes in your circumstances

You must write and tell us straight away if your circumstances change. For example, you must tell us if:

• You, or your partner, stop or start getting Income Support, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance, Pension Credit (Guarantee) or any other state benefit;
• Your wages, or your partner's wages go up or down;
• The number of people living with you changes;
• Any of your children leave school;
• You move (this includes a flat or room at the same address);
• You have another child; or
• Your rent changes.

We may be able to pay you more benefit if your circumstances change. Usually, though, we can only pay you the extra from the date your circumstances change if you tell us about the change within one month. If you don't tell us within a month, we will normally only pay you the extra from when you tell us.

If you want to tell us about a change in your circumstances, you can use our form Change of Circumstances available below.

If you tell us your circumstances have changed, we aim to work out your Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit again within 10 days.

• Change of Circumstances Fact Sheet

Checking your benefit

We will need to check the information we are using to work out your benefits from time to time. To do this, we may phone you, visit you or send you a form to fill in. You must give us the information we need when we contact you so we can carry on paying you benefit.