Comments close after three months.
Homeless hostel VAT bill withdrawn »
« Five legal housing/landlord & tenant law blogs
-
-
-
The Landlord Law Newsletter, For landlords and letting agents, separate tenants version available
Join Ben and Tessa's Front Liner newsletter, for social housing workers
[Ben Reeve Lewis is remembering dancing days of Yore...] My beloved Frazzy is a teacher of Salsa and… [more]
What is a premium tenancy? How does it tie in with deposits and payment of rent? I answer five que… [more]
Landlords need to be constantly vigilant as criminals are out there and targeting properties like y… [more]
If a property is due to be demolished before the end of the fixed term, where does that leave the te… [more]
Break clauses can be difficult to interpret and this is an example of a particularly confusing one. … [more]
Here is a question to the blog clinic from Jay who is a landlord: Hi I protected the deposit within … [more]
A big item of news this week was the launch of the Deposit Guard tenancy deposit scheme. However a… [more]
Here is a question to the blog clinic from Andrew who is a tenant: I have, today, received an email … [more]
[In view of the snow, Ben Reeve Lewis has abandoned his Hawaiian shirt for a pair of slippers...… [more]
Banks swiping our cash
An article in the Observer today ‘Banks exploiting obscure law to raid accounts and recover debts‘ prompts me to remind readers on housing benefit (HB), or landlords of tenants on housing benefits, of the advantages of using Credit Unions.
If you find it difficult to keep your bank account under control, you are always at risk that your housing benefit is going to be used up and will not be available to pay out to your landlord, thus putting your home at risk. Under the new rules which came into force last year, the new housing benefit, Local Housing Allowance (LHA), has to be paid (save in a few circumstances) to the tenant. Whereas before tenants could ask that it be paid direct to landlords, to safeguard their home.
Quite a few credit unions offer a service whereby they will ringfence any HB/LHA paid in, so it gets paid out to the landlord and cannot be used for any other purpose. I am compiling a list of credit unions offering this service on my Landlord Law site which you can see here. If you know of, or work for, any other credit unions offering this service, please let me know and I will add them to the list.
Credit unions would also be a safe haven for money being saved up for other purposes, to keep it safe from regular banks offsetting it against debts, as described in the Observer article.
Related posts:
Back to top