Please read this section carefully:
Discretionary Payments are additional payments which the Local Authority can make towards your rent, which can be paid to benefit customers who need more help with their housing costs over and above their benefit award(s).
Discretionary payments towards your rent are called Discretionary Housing Payments.
In order to qualify you must:
- Qualify for Housing Benefit OR Universal Credit housing costs, if you want help with rent.
Discretionary Payments cannot be awarded for any of the following:
- Service charges which cannot be covered by Housing Benefit or Universal Credit.
- When your Housing Benefit and/or Universal Credit payments are suspended or sanctioned, or if you are not entitled to those benefits for the period you want assistance with.
Discretionary Payments are meant to help you on a short-term basis only. There is no guarantee that you will actually get a payment. How much you get depends entirely on your circumstances.
Each case is looked at individually and can be paid for different periods of time.
The following things are looked at when making a decision:
- Your total income and any savings available to you.
- Whether anyone else in your property should be helping you financially.
- Whether you have any loans or debts still to pay.
- Whether you could rearrange your finances to help the situaltion.
- Whether you or your family have any special circumstances like ill health or disability.
- Whether you have made any attempts to remedy the situation yourself.
The Local Authority may ask you to attend their offices for an interview to support your application. If you are housebound, a member of staff can call at your home. We will contact you to make suitable arrangements.
If you wish to apply for a Discretionary Payment please complete and submit this form. If your application is successful, your payment is usually paid with any Housing Benefit that you get, although Discretionary Payments are not benefit payments.
We can use the details we already hold from your Housing Benefit claim to support your application. If you are claiming Universal Credit, you must provide your most recent award letter, because we cannot obtain this information from the DWP.
Uploading Documents
You may need to upload documents with this application.
Please have them available to upload at the end of this form.
The documents you may need to add are:
- Evidence of the Benefits you receive
- Evidence of Capital, for example: Bank Statements, Savings Accounts, etc
- Evidence or Rent, for example: rent statements
- Any other documents not listed above but which will support your application.
Please Note - the maximum total file size you can upload is 18MB
If your total file size is greater than 18MB you can upload additional documents via this link: Evidence Upload
