contrived tenancy

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solerina

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Sorry for imposing but I would really appreciate any advice or help you can offer. I currently live in our family home with my mother and brother . Mr brother is a pretty hardcore bottle a day alcoholic who hasn't worked for 5 yrs . We are buying a flat for him after 5 long years because we have exhasted every avenue to try to raise his moral to enter rehab and now the situation has become untennable . He is violent and unpredictable . He will not accept any form of help nor will he leave my 70yr old mother in peace because she is so fraught with worry for what will happen to him due to ill health . We thought that he could claim housing benefit and seeing as how he has been living gratis for 5yrs on my mums savings then it was only fair that the state picks up the tab when he's beyond the pale .
I was the one who suggested buying a flat and I never thought that there would be a conflict because of the background but my mum went to citizens advice today and they said there could be a problem . Please can I get your experiences on this ?
 
It sounds like you're taking the correct course of action, hard as it is to see it through, but I'm afraid I don't know anything about the supports available.
 
The council will decide, if the CAB are saying you definatly won't get housing benefit then they are WRONG!! you need to speak to the council who will be paying the HB. I was also told by the job centre I wouldn't b able to gt HB on a property owned by family but after researching I founf out it was bollocks basically!!!

Contrived tenancy is if you don't pay rent when you working, but if your circumstances change and you are able to claim HB then you start claiming rent (does that makes sense - its hard to explain via writing!) It must be a proper rental agreement, with rent book, tenancy agreement etc.... some people even advertise the property to show evidence to council it wasn't just bought for that reason.

The council will send a questionnaire with Q's such as "what happens if he gets behind with the rent/breaks tenancy agreement, will he be evicted" a lot of people if they were family will say no I couldn't evict, but that wouldn't be a "proper rent" so you have to be very careful what you reply.

If you need any other help let me know as i've done a lot of looking into it as my parents are thinking of investing somewhere and will rent to me, as im damn sick of living next door to the neighbours from hell!!!!
 
The law on this is clear if you just Google "contrived tenancy" - there are plenty of sites showing what's valid and what's not. The end story is that a family member can draw their housing benefit provided they pay a rent to the family member who owns the property. As LE says, it's got to be a properly rented set-up for the benefit to be valid.

It might be that a portion or even all of the benefit is paid direct to your mother, Solerina, as rent. I rented a house-share to a man on benefits, and Social Security paid his rent portion direct to me - I imagine that that might be one action they'd take, to ensure that the benefit didn't get used for any other purpose.
 
Sols,

Your best bet is to telephone the Housing Rights Service in Belfast - my fiance works there and they should be able to tell you exactly what to expect.

Don't go near Citizen's Advice, they will likely try to fob you off, give you the wrong advice and then refer you to Housing Rights anyway.

http://www.housingrights.org.uk/

I would also be careful about taking what our mainland UK members say to heart - the law over here is quite different in many aspects concerning benefits rights.
 
There's all sorts of differences in the laws of each member country - I'm not a lawyer so don't ask me why! With devolved government, it's quite normal for laws to be different in the different areas.
 
Okay, FU, thanks for that - silly me, thinking that the EU ensured that its members all sang off the same hymn sheet!
 
Y-y-you m-mean it doesn't exist to bring order to the disparate rules and regulations throughout Europe? Crikey, I've been misled for so long - I thought that it issued 'standards' for everything! :blink:
 
It wouldn't be my bag, but I suspect it's covered by the Local Government and Housing Act 1989 (England and Wales). The Local Government Act 2000 brought in some ammendments to do with governance in line with devolved structures, and Executive accounting mechanisms, which gave the Welsh greater autonomy. My understanding is that there are separate rules for Scotland (although these aren't massively different) and similarly one assumes Northern Ireland. As a general rule CAB's get as much wrong as they get right. They've improved no end from the days when they were staffed largely by volunteers or poorly paid law students who were using it as an interim before moving on to more gainful employment, but you would be wise to seek a second opinion on anything they tell you. If you're a member of trades union Sols they should have a 24/7 legal team who allow you to dip into their resource for free legal advice (though my experience is that this too varies massively in terms of quality and enthusiasm for which they'll assist). Legal advice should (in theory at least) not be exclusively confined to employment issues, though I'd tend to accept that the thoery is better than the practice
 
Thank you all for your advice I started to doubt myself . Looks like the deeds are more complicated than we thought . Looks like there's a covenant that the premises not be rented . Trying to find out if this is particular to the property or whether it applies to all ex housing exec flats . Listen I know I havn't been around on the site so I AM gratefull for your help. You know who you are and thanks . I'd like to start fresh with some of our patrons who I might have alienated by my attitude . I didn't expect that you would have helped me so thanks for that
 
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