Application For Housing And Council Tax Benefit: Fill & Download for Free

(Answer edited with more information Sept 2020)Yes, once.A little history here - back in 2011, two of my colleagues and I decided to leave the sinking ship that was our former employer; officially, as stated in our exit interviews, it was because our teams clients (we were a bespoke service for large corporate private medical claims) had been ring-fenced so the future of our role was tenuous to say the least. Without actually looking, we were contacted by a recruiter who knew the changes being made by our former employer, and we were lucky enough to be picked to start up a team launching a brand new product for what was at that time a very small company.This was a huge gamble for us despite the situation with our former employer, to leave a relatively secure job for a start up company we knew little about. Our decision was spurred on mainly due to the fact that our former manager was bullying me and another person on our small team in a well covered but very nasty manner, and despite my careful detailing of the incidents in a diary and email printout evidence on behalf of myself and the staff member too scared to speak up herself, the company effectively closed ranks and ignored my allegations. Not particularly relevant, but if anyone's curious, the bullying manager was fired less than a year later due to the slew of bullying/harassment claims made against her from the 8 people they'd hired to replace my friends and I - without us there the rest of the ‘old’ team left quickly, but the manager obviously felt she was bulletproof since my allegations caused no consequences for her and was either stupid or just inherently cruel enough to continue her bullying with new victims. Thankfully, my actions DID end up helping others even though I don't know the individuals involved, I'm thankful that what was a very difficult and frustrating outcome for me spared others having to go through the same. I heard from another person who left my former employer for my current one that the reason the manager was fired was because HR could no longer ignore the claims made against her. The area of the UK I live in hosts the majority of jobs in this particular industry, and it's no secret that the former manager is blacklisted amongst other future employers. Apologies for the digression, but it does explain somewhat how much it meant to me having a new boss after the awful experience with the former one.So, other than my best friend and I, only one person was recruited for that team at our new company before us, our manager, let's call her Anna. She was and is an incredible manager, a very inspiring person and a wonderful friend. We all formed a great bond in those early months particularly, the level of work gradually increased so that we went from having so little work that we were assisting other departments with basic tasks, making umpteen cups of tea and coffee, cleaning out stationery cupboards etc, to having to put in 12hr days and Saturday overtime to cope whilst new staff were trained. It was a stressful, but incredibly exciting few years, and very gratifying to see our hard work pay off and our company as a whole make an impressive name for itself in the industry - the gamble had paid off beyond anything we could have imagined!In early 2018I had an attempted gallbladder removal which failed but left me with a severe infection causing cellulitis in both my legs. I was off work for months, the infection caused my legs to swell to about 4x their size and constantly leak fluid. Without going into graphic detail (I have some horrific photos from that time!) the skin on my legs degraded to the point where there was no longer any actual skin below my knees. I did receive home nursing care throughout this by the way.One morning I went to the bathroom, walking was a huge struggle and I used a stick. I fell and was trapped with the stick tangled up with my legs, and no strength to get up. Luckily I had my phone in my dressing gown pocket and called for an ambulance and then for my best friend (one of the colleagues who moved to the new company with me) as she had a key to my flat. Unfortunately the communal entrance door was locked and my vile, drug dealing ex neighbours upstairs saw the blue flashing lights from the ambulance and wouldn't answer the door thinking it was the police. My friend was frantic, trying to get builders down the street to break the door in, shouting for the neighbours to open up, meanwhile I had passed out. I was there for 3 hours before the fire brigade managed to climb in through my first floor window and let the paramedics in. I was delirious by that point but as they brought me out my boss was there, having sent my distraught friend home, and she reassured me that she would contact my family who live abroad.I spent about 6 weeks in hospital, I was in a coma, suffered double pneumonia, multiple organ failure and sepsis and several times was not expected to survive the night. My boss visited me regularly on her lunch breaks even when I was unconscious and after the coma when I couldn't communicate verbally but only write.I did return to work briefly about 6 months after the accident but as I have been left with a brain injury causing partial paralysis and epilepsy I currently am unable to work. She still meets with me regularly to keep me updated on developments on our team (now grown from 3 people to over 100!) and has reassured me that my job as a senior member of staff is still there for me when I'm able to return even if it's part time. I couldn't ask for a better, more supportive boss, in fact the company itself has been incredible, they are still paying me 2 years after the event, still paying my pension, share scheme and for my private medical insurance.I'm currently waiting to be rehoused by my local council in an adapted property. Once I am my employer has already made preparations for me to work from home and visit the office as much or as little as I want. I appreciate very much how lucky I am to work for such a genuinely caring company and that has only made me more loyal to them. I am desperate to get back to work and start repaying some of the incredible kindness they have shown me.Edit: I originally put this in a response to a comment but thought it would be appropriate to add it to my main post and with a slight expansion.Since writing my initial post I have completed the ridiculously complicated and unnecessarily difficult process of being assessed by the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) in order to receive income support whilst I am unable to work. Due to the particular situation I am in I am in the somewhat unusual position of actually receiving about 30% more ‘take home pay’ than I would if I returned to work in the same position I previously held. Despite this, largely because my employer is so good and I genuinely love my job, I am anxious to return to work as soon as possible. To me, my quality of life will be better working, being productive and able to socialise with my colleagues, even if it is mostly working from home and part time at that.The alternative is doing nothing but stay at home. I still fill my days with reading, learning, writing, finding new hobbies etc., but I can see how easy it would be for someone in my position to just stagnate in front of the TV all day and become a shut in. I survived for a reason so I'm certainly not going to let that happen!If anyone cares about the numbers side of it, here's a brief explanation of how the (ever changing!) benefits system currently works in the UK.Universal Credit (UC) is based on your age and relationship status. As a single woman aged between 25 - 64 with no children I am entitled to £317 basic UC, £336 Limited capability for work and work related activities, and £535 housing costs per month.Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is comprised of 2 components, Daily Living and Mobility, each paying either a standard or enhanced rate if you qualify for either. This benefit is notoriously difficult to get and a huge percentage of people have to appeal decisions, 73% of appeals go on to be successful! After my successful appeal I receive the standard daily living rate and enhanced mobility rate which equates to £519.56 a month. Receiving the enhanced mobility rate also entitles me to access the motability scheme where a portion of your PIP (no more than £61.20 a week) can be sacrificed to lease a brand new car for 3 years, inclusive of tax, insurance for up to 3 drivers and maintenance. I can't yet take advantage of this as my epilepsy isn't sufficiently controlled but by June I am looking forward to having the freedom to get out!So if I didn't return to work I'd receive £1709.53 (I'd left off some penny amounts earlier if anyone's checking my maths!)In work full time I was taking home after tax, student loan repayments, national insurance and salary sacrifice for pension and the tax - not capital - on my company private medical insurance ~£1,450. On that wage I had to also pay my rent of £600 pcm, utilities, living costs etc and council tax of £1176 in 10 installments a year.Now I am exempt from council tax and I need to move to an adapted property, this isn't something I can do privately as you can't modify a rented home, so I'm on the housing register. The average rent is around £240 pcm, so I'll be saving a massive amount.Until I can legally drive again I can use my PIP to pay around £12 a week for a mobility scooter, but as I also have a free bus pass I would rather wait until I can get a car since I want to be able to transport my dog, do shopping, travel outside of my local area if needed.There are many flaws in the system and a lot of people would think that I am lucky to receive so much in benefits when most struggle on them, but the reason my allowances are higher than normal is because of my disabilities and the chronic pain and fatigue caused. As I said earlier I will be returning to work God willing, and whilst my UC will be affected I won't lose the other benefits. The affect on UC is that for every £1 I earn I lose 60p of UC, so I'll never actually be losing money.Yet another thing I have to be very grateful for as a UK citizen. The application and assessment process is stringent and very flawed - there are articles in the news daily about corrupt assessors and a system designed to make it as difficult as possible to claim, it's taken me around 8 months from my application to being awarded the entitlements I've listed which entailed filling in multiple forms and attending 5 face to face interviews along with submitting all my medical records for the last 2 years. I'm glad it's done now (for another 3 years anyway) but I'm also very grateful that our welfare system will provide assistance when its needed.Update September 2020: I'm now back at work part time!! I am so very happy about this, as you can imagine I am working from home and this is going to be the case for the foreseeable future, regardless of the COVID situation. As I am considered ‘highly vulnerable’ due to my medical history I have been, and will remain, in isolation for at least the next 6 months as the UK enters its second lockdown. I'm very sad that I've not been able to see my mum for over a year now, but the good news with my new arrangement for home working means that by using a VPN I can work anywhere, even abroad, without a problem. I am very much hoping that once life has returned to some form of normality I will be less restricted than before with trips to visit family abroad given that I wouldn't have to take time off work in order to do it!ANOTHER UPDATE: DEC 2020: Well, despite the utter shitshow this year has turned out to be, I'm now on my new 14 hours a week contract and whilst waiting for arrangements to be made for me to complete my FCA mandated 50 hours of annual training as well as the necessary medical retraining and department specific exams I'm beginning to work through the 40k odd emails accrued in my absence! Only a couple of people on my team actually know that I'm ‘back’ (um, working from a laptop in PJs on my sofa with a cup of tea!) so it's been rather fun observing my team working without knowing I'm there! I'm INCREDIBLY happy to be able to say that I'm now only receiving about 30% of the Universal Credit support I was previously on - whilst I certainly couldn't have survived without the government assistance, I am lucky that with the support of my employer I am regaining at least my financial independence.Unfortunately, my health has deteriorated significantly in the last few months. I have 3 vertebrae in my lower back which are pretty much shattered from a combination of trauma, stress fractures and bone degeneration (I've suffered malnutrition on and off since my teens/early 20s, and certain medication I've been on has contributed to early onset osteoporosis) and despite beginning treatment with Fentanyl patches in July this year, I am unable to do anything that involves bending, twisting, standing for longer than 10 minutes - and even then if I can lean on something like the kitchen counter. So I am going to have to continue claiming PIP in order to pay for the lady who comes in to clean and tidy my flat for me, I'm unable to even go down the 7 steps to the street to put out rubbish! Again I am very lucky though, she goes far above and beyond what most cleaners would and does things like arranging the tins in the cupboard by type and taking a photo so I'm not hunting for things, she brought little cardboard boxes to make ‘drawers’ in them so I could easily reach small packets on the shelves, she is a god send - quite literally as I was put in touch with her through a mutual acquaintance at our church! Since I'm getting worse though I need her help more often, so much as I'd like to go back to being financially independent I need to continue claiming PIP at least - but it's not something I can change and I know that I needn't feel guilty over a genuine need, hopefully one day I'll believe myself!!

Contrary to popular belief, most Tories are fair minded decent people. If you ask most of them about the bedroom tax all they know is the official “It’s just bringing the public sector in line with the private sector”.When you actually explain it to them, most are horrified at the effects of it, because lets be honest here, only the left wing media has reported any of the cases. That has to stop. Everyone has to be made aware of the hardship and pain that this is causing.With more welfare cuts in the pipeline it’s time for a real debate about what is and isn’t fair, but that discussion is for another post.So let’s look at the under occupancy charge. Supporters of the changes have referred to the unreformed system as a “spare room subsidy” whereby tax-payers are said to be subsidising social housing tenants living in houses larger than their needs require, with the said intention of the policy being to reduce these costs and ease housing shortages and overcrowding. Supposedly the rationale of the policy is to encourage council tenants living in houses too big for their needs to move to smaller properties so that existing housing stock can be better used.Research by the BBC suggests that only 6% of those affected have moved. Mainly this is because there is no where to move to. There are very few 1 bed properties in the social sector partly because the difference between the cost of building a one and a two bedroom property are so small that it is better to provide the accommodation that is more flexible. Currently huge numbers of couples and single people find themselves in a two bed property that was what they were offered by the council. Many of these are in high rise flats where the councils have made the decision that the houses were not suitable for families, so have used them as housing for people who only need a one bedroom property.New Government figures show the number of empty three and four bedroom properties increased from 25,462 in 2012-13 to 26,958 in 2013-14 when the tax was introduced. As a result lost rental income went up from £107million to £127million, and some authorities are considering demolishing empty homes.A second rationale made by the Department for Work and Pensions is to reduce the overall housing benefit bill. If you are decreed to be under occupying your house by one bedroom then you lose 14% by two you lose 25%.On the face of it that sounds quite reasonable. Why indeed should spare rooms be paid for at the expense of the taxpayer? The problem comes with the definition of what constitutes a spare room, and the idea that it is just bringing it in line with the private sector.According to some research two thirds of those affected claim some form of disability benefit. Many sleep in a separate room from their partner because of it. Many use the spare room for their disability equipment. Many have had a small fortune spent on adapting their homes to suit, yet none of these things were originally taken into account.If an extra room is required for a carer to stay overnight that is accepted if the person requiring care is the claimant or their partner, but not if it is one of their children even when they become an adult. After cases that went to the supreme court there have been some successes where a disabled person was accepted as needing a separate room and the issue of a carer for a child were accepted as requirements, but like all court cases these are individual decisions and although they create a precedent, it doesn’t mean the local authoritywill accept it without a challenge. See With and without foundation - Bedroom tax in Supreme Court - Nearly Legal: Housing Law News and CommentOn the subject of children, the rules are now that two children under the age of ten must share a room irrespective of sex, and if same sex must share a room till 16. This is quite different from the housing allocation policies of many authorities. Many authorities will allocate a bedroom per child if there is more than a 4 year age gap, so the housing authority would not expect a 3 year old boy to share with his 12 year old brother, however according to the under occupancy rules that would mean that the household were over accommodated.Most authorities will also take a shared residence order into account when allocating a home, but there is no recognition of the huge numbers of parents sharing care of their children when it comes to the bedroom tax. Only the parent receiving the child benefit can claim that their children live with them. The damage this has done is incalculable. I know of numerous fathers that have been forced into accommodation where their children can no longer stay overnight, causing tears and trauma to the children involved.Until the subject of benefits where there is shared care is addressed this will remain a problem. You would imagine that if two children each spend half their time with each parent, then it would make sense for the child benefit to be split between parents, however the official line is that it is awarded based on who has primary care of the children, and where the children spend equal time with each parent, that is decided by the address for school, usually the Mother’s. Of course where there are two children, the parents could each claim for one, but unless they do it in agreement with each other, the decision always favours the mother.That covers some of the questions of whether a room is spare or not. Now lets look at the assertion that it is just bringing the public sector in line with the private sector.Firstly the private rented sector is quite different from the social housing sector. If you rent privately you know that you are in a short term let which, after the initial six months, you can be given a months notice to leave at any time. You have no security of tenure and normally you can’t redecorate or make any changes to the house. You know and accept that in the private sector any move is temporary. You simply don’t expect to be in the same place for long.In the social sector, after a probationary period, you do have security of tenure, you can redecorate and, with permission, make improvements to your home. The social sector has always been seen as a home for life, and people treat it that way often over the years spending many thousands of pounds on their home and garden. Frequently as families grow up and leave home they will get houses on the same estate so there is a support network for everyone living there. On most council estates there is a real sense of community.Now lets look at the way rents are dealt with. Since 2008 rents in the private sector are calculated in bands called Local Housing Allowance rates or LHA.Initially if a tenant could find a cheaper property than the applicable rate, they were allowed to keep the difference. That stopped in 2009. The changes were Labour’s attempt to control the spiralling housing benefit bill, but instead they dramatically increased rents payable for the larger homes. Overall they restricted housing benefit to the median rate for an area, i.e. the LHA was set at a rate that would cover the rent for 50% of the properties available in an area. Previously housing benefit covered any fair rent for the property claimed for, so it didn’t matter how much the rent was as long as it was deemed to be a fair rent.Now the coalition government lowered the LHA rates to only cover 30% of the properties in a broad market area. This means that the amount payable for a two bed property varies from £85 a week in West Pennine to £300 a week in Central London.In the area I live in the LHA rate for a one bedroom house is £91.38 a week or £395 a month. The council rent for a two bedroom house is around £74 a week or £320 a month. If you happen to be a single dad with shared care of your two children renting privately you need to find a two bed where the rent is less than the one bedroom rate of £395 which isn’t that hard to do. In fact on the estate I live on there are ex council houses available at that price. Admittedly they are unmodernised, still having gas wall heaters rather than central heating, but perfectly adequate. So a single father who is not in receipt of child benefit living in a two bed council house will have 14% of his rent ignored for housing benefit purposes, so will have to find £10.36 a week off his JSA of roughly £75, so the housing benefit payable is £275 a month. If he then moves to the privately rented house the HB payable is the full £395. So if he moves to affordable accommodation the bill to the taxpayer rises by £120 a month. Even if he moves from 2 bed council to 1 bed private the HB payable is going to rise. Where is the sense in that? It certainly doesn’t look as if people moving to a smaller house is going to save any money unless they can stay within the social sector, and those homes simply don’t exist.If the desire is truly to make the most of the available housing stock, then it doesn’t make sense to exempt pensioners as they are the people most likely to have spare rooms. In some areas councils have schemes where they pay a bounty to anyone moving to a smaller house, sometimes as much as £1800 a room plus help with removal and redecorating expenses. Wouldn’t that be far more likely to create a better use of housing stock than the punitive under occupancy charges?The realities of this legislation is it cannot achieve any of the supposed objectives!

Short answer, no. Not at all.Once upon a time, following WW2, the UK Labour government (socialist) which was voted for in an overwhelming conclusion at the election, brought in such terribly socialist things as The National Health Service, which implemented universal basic health care to all, free at source to all users. This is now being broken up and handed bit by bit to private companies which costs us all more in every which way. The service costs more, for less. Waiting times increase. Cost per appointment rises. Mistakes soar. Controversies rage. Just this last week there has been the unwholesome unearthing of a drastically horrendous case of putting profits before everything else. Here’s a link to that one.NHS supplier that accumulated body parts faces criminal investigationhttps://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/04/human-body-parts-stockpiled-hundreds-tonnes-nhs-contracted-waste/I’ve used two newspaper sites as some might accuse me of bias in choosing a left-leaning paper or a right-leaning one.Housing, in post-WW2 was also one of the ‘evil’ socialist things which was introduced and expanded in Britain. “Homes fit for heroes” was one way it was stated. I live in one of those very houses (actually a flat, though it looks like a house). In my back garden is an old, well built, shed, but which was once a railwayman’s hut. It was brought here in the 1950s for an ex-Royal Navy man to sleep in after he returned home from a Japanese POW camp, and then from a British hospital in the Far East, after his ship was sunk in the Pacific/South China Sea. He was in the water for 24 hours and developed TB. The Japanese took him and all survivors out of the water and cared for them as best they could, and he survived until the 1970s. When I took on the tenancy to my home 12 years ago, it was after the death of his widow who passed away at 102 years old, one of the oldest twins in Europe at the time. Her sister died very shortly before.The houses were often built of pre-fabricated concrete, as mine is, but had decent gardens, indoor toilets and bathrooms, open fires, and were brand spanking new.Other ‘council houses’, as they became known because they were all owned by the local council/government, were solid, basic, sound, ample housing for a cheaper price than any landlord could offer. They were/are unfurnished and were/are able to be internally decorated in whatever reasonable manner the tenant wished. The main structure and exteriors were/are maintained by the council.At some point, many more houses were built all over Britain and Northern Ireland by councils using central government funding. They loaned the money at extremely low interest rates (being as any government can borrow money from banks at far more competitive rates than any private or public company can dream of doing. They employed local people to build them. They trained young people to learn the trades. They sourced local resources. The communities soared from the investments. When the private housing sector rose with the economy, into the 1960s for example, council housing was less needed so the tradesmen who built them moved over to build new private houses to replace the Victorian slums which were being torn down. When the ecomony took a nose dive and the private housing sector slumped there was an increase in need for council housing again and so the building workers moved back to construct those. The wages may have been marginally less working on council housing, but not greatly so, and there were benefits too. Also, it was at least a wage income instead of being thrown on the heap, as had been the case prior to WW2.In 1979 Britain voted in a Conservative government on a radical programme of change. In the early 1980s this same government introduced into law The Housing Act, which meant that anyone who had lived in a council house could now buy it. The story was that the money raised from the sale of the ‘dated housing stock’ would fund new houses. It didn’t happen.Some years later, entire housing lots were sold off en masse to Housing Associations, which are private companies with, nowadays, ‘Charitable Status’, and which were always meant to be ‘not-for-profit’. Things changed radically then, but even the vote was odd. Anyone who didn’t vote for the local Council Housing stocks to be sold off was considered a ‘yes’ vote for this to happen. The votes cast were overwhelmingly against the sale, but the sale went ahead due to this odd, and downright shady, arrangement.Anyone in Britain at any time can apply for benefits. They may be a £Millionaire, or be in work or whatever, but they are entitled to apply. Not all get the benefits. Anyone who is not entitled to them, for dozens of reasons, will be filtered out.Anyone who is living in a Housing Association dwelling, as I am, does not get it free. There is a strict rent agreement. There are stricter rules applying than apply to anyone in private housing, noise for example can see a tenant evicted. There are also some welcome freedoms, for example to decorate the interiors as you wish to, which private tenants rarely have.If one falls on hard times, and under the government of austerity, which have had since 2010, so many people on the lower quartile of income are struggling more and more. Recently there was a report in a relatively right wing newspaper that 14 million people, including 4 million children, in the UK are living below the official poverty line. [N.B. the UK government official poverty line is well below what many NGOs consider the poverty lines.]There are now 14,000,000 people living in poverty in the UKSo, if you fall into hard times and your company has laid you off, or closed, or you have a zero hour contract, as SO many do now in the UK *(which effectively means you are entitled to zero hours work and if you turn up for a full shift of 8 hours, perhaps paying £6 for your travel to your job, and you only get 3 hours, then told there’s no work now till next month, there’s nothing you can do but change your job. So, you have no work, and you have not enough money to pay your rent, even at 85% of local standard mean of rents payable in any area, then you can claim Housing Benefit.Once upon a time this was all paid for 3 months, then you got any ‘spare’ bedroom space taken off the benefit as a percentage of the rent. So, you had to either downsize (and in some areas there are simply too few smaller dwellings suitable or available to do this), or find the extra. It was once also done that all of the council tax (a banded charge per dwelling which is paid to the local government/council which replaced the old and now obsolete ‘rates’ we once had to pay for local services and such). Now, for the last 7 years or so, this is no longer applicable. One must pay for 20% of this charge straight from the subsistence payment one gets to live on and pay for food, laundry, cleaning, clothing, etc.Here’s some figures from the government website to explain some of these amounts.Note: There have been at least two occasions when politicians have opted, as a gimmick more than anything else, to ‘play’ at being unemployed and try to survive on the basic pay of this. They ignored the extras they would pay for housing needs and for council tax and yet none managed to make it even one week on their income. Most people could actually survive for one week on pure water, based on a reasonable health and a reasonable diet before they started the week. Months and years? Another matter entirely.There is no free housing in the UK. There is ever increasing homelessness.Just to redress the answer Paul Murphy gave below.. Yes, there are a very few professional scroungers in the UK who learn the system, fake some illness symptoms and gain huge amounts of money per week in benefits. These are rare and ill-liked people. Meanwhile, the real benefit scroungers are the CEOs and CFOs of vast companies who pay so low wages to their workers that the workers need to apply for supplementary benefits (the names of these benefits change so I won’t name them for the current system, but they were variously called “Working Families Tax Credit”, and so on.While this is happening the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were paying bonuses to their employees for finding any excuse to refuse benefits to claimants on the slightest pretext or excuse. The death toll is pretty high on this account, as Paul mentions below.Apart from this, I nod to his knowledge of the amounts of money and the ‘generosity’ of the UK benefits system in general.