Temporary Absences
If you are getting Housing Benefit or Universal Credit Housing Costs Element and you temporarily leave your home because of fear of violence, your housing-money can continue for a year.
The rules are slightly different in Housing Benefit and UC-HCE but the effect is the same.
This applies even if you are paying rent at your temporary accommodation – such as a women’s refuge.
For benefit-nerds like me, here are the UC rules, the HB rules for working age people and the HB rules for people over pension age
Not Going Back
If you decide not to return to your normal home, then it’s no longer a temporary absence.
Housing Benefit can continue for a notice period of upto 4 weeks.
But there is no similar rule in Universal Credit. Once you decide not to return to your old home, your UC Housing Costs Element will stop.
This means that if you are claiming UC-HCE and you decide not to return to your former home, you will either have to pay the rent for the notice period, or persuade your former landlord to waive the notice period rent.
Timing Your Decision Making – Don’t Double Your Problem
Universal Credit is always administered by assessment periods of one calendar month.
What you get depends on your circumstances on the last day of your assessment period.
This means that if you decide not to return to your former home on the last day of your assessment period, the temporary absence rule will no longer apply.
So you won’t get any HCE for the month just gone, and you will still have to deal with the notice period for the coming month. There will be a two-month shortfall.
But, if you make that decision on the first day of your next assessment period, you will get the HCE for the month that’s just gone – and you only have to deal with notice-period problem.
Of course, it’s not always possible to control these factors, but where it is, it’s important to understand the rule so that you don’t have a double problem.