LAWD2/2025 3 February 2025

Crown Copyright 2025

Recipients may freely reproduce this bulletin.

Contact

If you have queries about the:

• technical content of this bulletin then contact details are given at the end of each article
• general content and distribution of this bulletin, contact lawelfare.correspondence@dwp.gov.uk

Who should read

All Housing Benefit colleagues and wider if appropriate.

Action

For information.

Editorial

Welcome everyone to the second LA Welfare Direct bulletin of 2025. It is 12 months since I last wrote the editorial and I return to the same topic as then; the ‘LA customer survey on data sharing and data security’ feedback you are providing to my team.

My team introduced this annual survey of all local authorities (LAs) in late 2021 and we now have three full years’ worth of results on our data shares.

Percentage of LAs satisfied or very satisfied by each data share

Data share	Satisfied or Very Satisfied 2022	Satisfied or Very Satisfied 2023	Satisfied or Very Satisfied 2024	Change over three years
Automated Transfer to LA Systems (ATLAS)	89%	88%	94%	+5%
Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP)	76%	87%	90%	+14%
Searchlight	75%	85%	87%	+12%
Housing Benefit Debt Service (HBDS)	63%	74%	77%	+14%
Housing Benefit Matching Service (HBMS)	62%	75%	75%	+13%
UC Local Council Tax Reduction data share (UC-LCTR)	65%	67%	72%	+7%
HB Debt Recovered by DWPs Debt Management data share	44%	58%	64%	+20%
Apollo	42%	55%	52%	+10%
Housing Benefit Risk Model	34%	53%	51%	+17%
Average	61%	71%	74%	+13%

These positive results showing increasing satisfaction generally reflect where we’ve made improvements, or where LAs know improvements are on the way soon. Given the further planned improvements (we anticipate being able to deliver to VEP, Searchlight, HBMS, UC LCTR and Apollo in the coming 12 months), we hope the satisfaction levels will increase further.

None of this would be possible without your feedback and support; sometimes during the ideas and/or trialling phases or sometimes just from filling in the annual LA customer survey. So, please keep on providing us with that open, honest feedback. It really helps.

Equally, not all LAs choose to fill in the survey. Of course, that is your prerogative and we recognise how busy you all are. But, please note, we do look very carefully through the results and utilise all the feedback we are given in planning future action as we recognise there is more to do.

Anyhow, please read on. This month you’ll find important articles about a number of matters, not just improvements to our data sharing.  Enjoy!

Paul Selby, LA-PED Deputy Divisional Manager

Annual uprating for the financial year ending March 2026

1. The following paragraphs should be read in conjunction with Housing Benefit (HB) circular A11/2024.

Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance

2. The new rates for Child Benefit and Guardian’s Allowance will be published on the GOV.UK website in due course.

Polygamous marriage cases  

3. The table provided in the circular gives details of the rates which are increased by the annual uprating order. However, the table does not include a rate for the additional member in a polygamous marriage for the Working Age legacy benefits, including HB, because these rates aren’t included in the uprating order.

4. If you have any Working Age polygamous marriage cases, paragraph 1(a) and (b) of  Regulation 23 of the Housing Benefit Regulations 2006 sets out how to calculate the rate for the additional member of a polygamous marriage.

5. The calculation is as follows:

• the amount for a single person over 25 is deducted from the amount for a couple where one is over 18 to obtain the amount for the additional member. So, the sum for the period beginning in April 2025 will be £144.65 (couple rate) minus £92.05 (single person over 25 rate) = £52.60

6. If you have any questions about this article, please contact us at housing.policyenquiries@dwp.gov.uk

The Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016

7. The Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 (the Act) came into force in Wales on 1 December 2022. It changed the way people rent their homes, providing better protection from eviction as well as many other improvements. For more information on the Act, visit Renting Homes Wales.

8. As part of these changes, everyone who rents their home (called ‘contract-holders’ under the Act), will be given an occupation contract by their landlord. Amongst other things, this contract requires the landlord to make the home ‘fit for human habitation’. This new right is in addition to the right to have repairs carried out by the landlord.

9. Occupation contracts will usually contain a term which states that a contract-holder is not required to pay rent in respect of any day or part day during which the dwelling is unfit for human habitation.

10. A contract-holder may enact this clause if they believe that the home is not fit for human habitation.

11. Where an HB claimant enacts this clause in their occupation agreement, they cease to be liable to pay rent. Consequently, the claimant ceases to be eligible to receive HB and any award must end in line with the usual rules.

12. Contract-holders (tenants) in receipt of HB should seek advice on the potential impact of enacting this clause on the benefit they receive.

13. Full guidance can be found at Fitness for human habitation: guidance for tenants.

14. If you have any questions about this article, please contact housing.policyenquiries@dwp.gov.uk

New Housing Benefit Matching Service Rule: Do Not Redirect for overseas addresses only

15. The Housing Benefit Matching Service (HBMS) is a mechanism used to cross reference customer information data derived from Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) benefits and or Other Government Departments systems with HB data derived from local authority (LA) systems.

16. Where discrepancies occur, a customer referral is generated requiring the LA to investigate and resolve; supporting them in identifying potential fraud and error.

17. Abroad fraud is the second biggest cause of Fraud and Error in the Pension age HB caseload, and the Local Authority Partnership, Engagement and Delivery (LA-PED) division is committed to tackling this area as high priority.

18. This communication is to inform LAs of a new HBMS Royal Mail Do Not Redirect rule covering overseas addresses only.

19. The rule will be available from early February 2025 and referrals will be identified as HBRM011.

20. This rule has been designed to identify where an HB claimant or partner’s address shows as being changed to that of an abroad address on the Royal Mail Redirection Database but has not been reflected on the HB claim.

21. The match identifies HB claimants and/or partners potentially residing at an overseas address for a period of four weeks or more.

22. The volumes of referrals for this rule are expected to be low but of a high quality, requiring LAs to prioritise the actioning of the referrals as and when they are received.

23. The rule will be added to the HBMS guide on Glasscubes.

Any questions regarding this article can be sent to lawelfare.datamatching@dwp.gov.uk

Changes to HBMS Rule HBUC007

24. This rule identifies when HB and Universal Credit (UC) Housing Element are in payment at the same time. Following feedback from LAs who have reported receiving incorrect referrals, LA-PED has made three major changes:

• improved supported accommodation and temporary accommodation (SA/TA) fields available to LAs, which will ensure all SA/TA cases are removed and no referrals issued

• duplicate referrals will only be reissued after a six-month period has elapsed and discrepancy remains unactioned; reducing the current practice of recycling each month

• a date of birth calculation has been implemented to remove customers who have reached State Pension Age and who should be in receipt of HB

25. The changes have now been implemented and are live and will improve the quality of referrals received by LAs. The HBMS Guide has also been updated and can be found on Glasscubes.

26. If you have any questions regarding the content of this article, do contact lawelfare.datamatching@dwp.gov.uk

Latest update: Progress on removing LAs reliance on the Public Service Network

27. You were reminded in LAWD3/2024 that two of DWP’s IT services (Searchlight and Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP)) are still accessed through the Public Service Network (PSN).

28. To assist LAs in removing their reliance on PSN, DWP Digital colleagues are currently developing the solution to migrate these two services from the legacy PSN ingress to access them through the internet.

29. As previously communicated, the design of the proposed solution is taking longer than anticipated due to the complexity of the work involved. Progress continues to be made on the design of the internet facing solution. We are working with a small number of LAs who will be assisting with the testing of the new solution for Searchlight in early 2025 ahead of rollout to all LAs later in 2025. The VEP solution will be progressed once the solution for Searchlight has been implemented.

30. We will continue to provide updates over the coming months to keep LAs updated on progress with testing and to help inform what activity LA’s will need to undertake and when, to move to the new internet solution.

31. If you have any questions, please email lawelfare.ladsdeliveryteam@dwp.gov.uk or lawelfare.lasupport@dwp.gov.uk

Update: UC data sharing

UC – Local Council Tax Reduction data feed enhancements implementation update

32. As advised in LAWD1/2025, we continue with our agreed rollout schedule of the fully enhanced version 2 files to coincide with software suppliers’ latest releases that take advantage of all the changes.

33. We met with Capita and a group of Capita software-using test LAs. As a result of positive version 2 testing against the supplier’s latest release, five LAs (Anglia Revenues Partnership) requested to go live and are due to do so imminently.

34. We will be meeting again to agree the date in February 2025 to release version 2 files to all Capita LAs.

35. We will meet with Civica test LAs in February 2025 to agree a date in March 2025 to release version 2 files to all LAs that use Civica, as per our implementation plan.

36. The team strongly welcomes feedback on its communications as well as the enhancements it has made to the Local Council Tax Reduction data feed, including LA experience of testing and going live. We will aim to continually improve the associated technical guidance document and other communications, based on this feedback. Please tell us what we’re getting right and what would help make things better.

37. Please send your feedback to lawelfare.datasharingtransformation@dwp.gov.uk

Additional UC information on Searchlight

38. In LAWD1/2025, we advised that we were aiming to complete the building and testing of the first iteration of additional UC information on Searchlight in order to release it to users by February 2025. Since that update, we encountered issues relating to end-to-end testing that has taken time to resolve.

39. This has arisen because, whilst the end user will receive a fully integrated enhancement to existing fields, the additional data is coming from a different and new source. This means that end-to-end testing had to be established for the first time and we encountered additional complexity with this.

40. Replanning was finalised and agreed on 31 January 2025 and we are now targeting 3 April 2025 as the date LAs will be able to view the first iteration of additional UC claim data on Searchlight. We are sorry for this delay and we believe this extra work will ensure future iterations will then follow more ‘relatively’ rapidly. We will continue to update on progress.

Identifying Local Vulnerability data sharing working group

41. As advised in LAWD1/2025, we held face-to-face workshops in Cardiff and Glasgow during January 2025. This concludes our series of discovery workshops. We will draw together our findings from these workshops and share them with participants and other members of our specific working group of LAs for this topic.

42. The Local Authority Data Sharing Transformation team would like to thank the ever-growing number of contributors to the Identifying Local Vulnerability data sharing working group. The workshops have been extremely helpful in understanding LA requirements and capabilities for this future data sharing service. All this helpful feedback will also help us to develop a business case and potential timeline for future delivery.

43. We will continue to provide updates on progress in these three areas of data sharing through this LAWD bulletin. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact lawelfare.datasharingtransformation@dwp.gov.uk

Invitation to the next Data sharing and IT consultation and engagement forum

44. The next forum will be held on Tuesday 4 March 2025 from 11.00am to 12 noon.

Joining instructions

45. The joining instructions are:

• follow this link to join the MS Teams live event, or call in (audio only) by dialling 0203 787 4277 and when prompted for the Phone Conference ID, enter 976 237 506# Note: It is more difficult to ask questions through dial-in so, if you anticipate having questions, we recommend joining through MS Teams where possible

• aim to join the event two or three minutes before the start time, as we intend to start promptly

• speakers will be muted by default, but instructions will be given during the event if you want to ask a question

Forum agenda

• a 5-minute introduction from DWP, covering projects recently delivered, projects currently in delivery, insight into future planned projects, as well as the most recent common issues that have been reported to us

• 30 to 45 minutes of questions from LAs on the call about the projects and matters covered in the introduction and any other IT and data sharing questions and issues LAs may have

• if time allows, 15 minutes focused on suggestions from LAs about future data sharing, data matching or automation projects that DWP could consider funding and delivering

46. The call will be recorded and the recording will be published on Glasscubes.

47. The forum is open to all LAs and it would be beneficial for every LA to have at least one representative dial into the forum to help us maximise feedback. Each LA representative should:

• seek input and feedback from as many of their colleagues as possible prior to dialling in, for example, questions they might want answering

• have knowledge, at least at a high level, about data sharing, data matching and current IT topic areas

• feedback to their colleagues about how the conference call went, including the answers to the questions we asked

48. We look forward to your participation on the call. However, if you have any questions in the meantime, please contact paul.selby@dwp.gov.uk

Practitioners’ Operational Group and LA Welfare Steering Group

49. The last LA Welfare Steering Group meeting took place on 23 January 2025. Agenda items included bringing the administration together for HB and Pension Credit, LA funding, Move to UC and the Cost of Living.

50. Both groups’ meetings are held bi-monthly (and alternately), so the next Practitioners’ Operational Group meeting is scheduled to take place on 20 February 2025.

51. If you have any questions regarding topics raised at these consultation groups, you can email lawelfare.correspondence@dwp.gov.uk

HB Decisions by the Upper Tribunal

52. Decision Making and Appeals Leeds is not aware of any HB cases that have been decided by the Upper Tribunal (UT) since the last edition of the LAWD bulletin.

HB cases awaiting a Decision by the Upper Tribunal

53. Decision Making and Appeals Leeds have been made aware of the following HB case that is awaiting a decision by the Upper Tribunal since the last edition of the LAWD bulletin:

• UA-2024-000528-HB – DWP has requested to be joined as second respondent to the appeal concerning HB and the question of whether a closed-period supersession can be done, in advance, where it is possible to anticipate both the beginning and the end of a change of circumstances (in this case, a planned absence abroad), that will cease entitlement for a certain period

54. A selection of decisions of the UT are published on their website. Do be aware that there is an undefined time lapse between decisions being issued and their appearance on the website.

55. If you have any queries about cases before the UT Judges or courts, please contact us by email at quarryhouse.dmaleedscustomersupportservices@dwp.gov.uk

New Legislation

56. The following Statutory Instruments (SIs) have been laid:

• 2025 No. 5 – The Rent Officers (Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Functions) (Modification) Order 2025, made on 6 January 2025

• 2025 No. 12 – The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Financial Recognition Scheme (Income Tax Exemption) Regulations 2025, made on 7 January 2025

• The Council Tax (Deman Notices and Prescribed Classes of Dwellings) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, made on 7 January 2025

• The Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Prescribed Requirements) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, made on 15 January 2025

• The Social Security (Income and Capital Disregards) (Amendment) Regulations 2025, made on 17 January 2025

• The Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 (Commencement No. 2 and Transitionary Provision) Regulations 2025, made on 22 January 2025

57. Copies of SIs can now be downloaded from legislation.gov.uk

What’s new on our HB pages on www.gov.uk

58. The following items can be found on the website link shown.

LA Welfare Direct 1/2025

Content type: bulletin.

Link: LAWD1/2025

Contents

Editorial

Update: Universal Credit data sharing

Improvements to the Automated Transfer to Local Authority Systems’ notifications of benefit termination reasons

HB debt recovered by DWP’s Debt Management: Updated service level agreement

Guidance published on the new lasting power of attorney online service

Ukraine Permission Extension scheme

Big Energy Saving Week

Update: Move to UC

POG and LA Welfare Steering Group

HB Decisions by the Upper Tribunal

New Legislation

What’s new on our HB pages on the GOV.UK website

Performance Measurement HB work programme attached as a separate Appendix A