How benefits are paid
If you qualify for Council Tax Support we will pay it straight into your Council Tax account. A new bill will show the amount you have to pay after the benefit has been deducted.
Council tenants
We will pay you a weekly rent rebate straight to your rent account, reducing the amount of rent you have to pay.
Housing association tenants
We usually pay a rent allowance to you, but sometimes we can pay it to your housing association or landlord. We usually pay it every 4 weeks, in arrears.
If you receive Local Housing Allowance we must pay this directly to you unless there are exceptional circumstances. We can only make payments to your landlord in specific circumstances and we have developed a set of criteria that help us make a decision on these cases; we call this our safeguards policy.
Payments
We normally pay benefit from the Monday after your claim form is received.
In some circumstances the date on which you are treated as making your claim is different to the date on which you hand in your claim. If you would like more information regarding the date benefit is paid from please contact the Benefits Service.