Universal-Credit-Guide-for-Private-Landlords - Manual / Resource - Page 24
The APA Request for rent arrears letter is a
letter to the tenant if they reach two months
rent arrears. It highlights the fact a section
8 notice has been served and encourages
the tenant to take the notice and letter to
the Jobcentre to request direct payment of
future housing element to the landlord.
Q. Have any of these developments or
changes worked particularly well?
Yes, all the template letters are regularly
used and have helped tenants understand
the process and their responsibilities.
Q. Anything you would particularly like
improved?
I would like to see greater improvement in
Work Coaches identifying vulnerabilities
and encouraging APA’s where this could
avoid a build up of rent arrears and a risk of
eviction. It would be beneficial for
Landlords for the APA to be enforced if it is
in the interest of helping the tenant retain
their tenancy. I would like to see the
Jobcentre put more emphasis on the fact
the claimant must pay their rent out of the
total UC award, and be given more
awareness of how the UC award is made
up.
Q. What have been your greatest
challenges since going live with Full UC?
escalate this, but we have had mixed
results.
DWP Identifying Claimants with complex
needs. This has improved, and we have
developed practices to try and overcome
this. However without intervention from us,
we felt the work coach may not always
identify a person as vulnerable.
Sometimes a payment will show as paid to
the Landlord on the tenants journal and we
have had to wait to actually receive the
payment. We have learnt that this is due to
the third party payment system and could
be an error with those cases, however we
have built a relationship with our Local
Council and with the DWP Partner Manager
that has helped us understand why this has
happened and enabled us to escalate this
issue within the DWP.
Ultimately UC can be difficult for smaller
landlords or those landlords who work full
time and do not have the support. But, I
would say this is why it’s best to build
relationships with the local authorities and
they can educate us on these types of
policy changes like UC implementation and
help when things go wrong, where
necessary.
Continued ...
Dealing with the data protection side and
not having a person to talk to when issues
arise with APA requests and payments.
Understanding the APA request route,
especially when using the non secure email
route, and how best to ensure all the
information required to support the request
is shared with DWP. We have developed a
practice where we will accompany the
tenant to the Jobcentre, if they agree to
this, to highlight the reasons an APA would
be appropriate, the work coach can
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Universal Credit/Information for Landlords
April 2018
www.gov.uk/universal-credit
DWP service centre 0800 328 5644