Benefits and support

Housing Benefit advice for landlords

The type of Housing Benefit a private tenant can claim is known as Local Housing Allowance (LHA). Tenants who live in the Liverpool area and have a low income may be able to claim LHA.

To find out if your tenant could claim LHA or Universal Credit see our Local Housing Allowance page.

View your tenant’s payments and Housing Benefit claims online

If you receive Housing Benefit payments direct, you can view certain details about your tenant’s Housing Benefits claims and payments online using the Landlord Portal.

This includes:

  • Individual claims including next payment due
  • Check deductions due to overpayments
  • Payments

You will need to register to access the portal - we just need an email address and your landlord number (you’ll find this at the top of any notification letters).

Register to use the Landlord Portal

Read our privacy notice which tells you how we use your data

When you have registered we will send you a link to the portal, along with a user guide and instructions on how to add other users in your organisation.

Information we can give to landlords

If you contact us we can only give you limited information due to confidentiality. In some cases landlords are seen as a 'person affected' and have rights to certain information. A landlord is a 'person affected' when:

  • We are recovering an overpayment from a tenant. We can detail the amount, period and reasons for any overpayment being recovered.
  • We are paying Housing Benefit directly to a landlord. We can detail the amount, weekly benefit rate and period covered by payments made directly to them, and the date direct payments stop.
  • A landlord has asked for direct payments and we have refused. We can explain why we will not pay direct.

The Landlord Portal and overpayment letters provide all the relevant information landlords are entitled to know.

Tenant consent/authorisation

We can talk about a claim if the tenant gives us permission by signing a Tenant Consent form. In this scheme we are able to talk about missing information needed to work out their claim for benefit with their landlord.

Please note: Where a claimant has not asked for benefit to be paid directly to the landlord, we cannot give any information about a claim at all.

We can give landlords information if a tenant has signed a letter of authorisation or asked in writing that their landlord act on their behalf. We will only give information covered by the letter of authorisation.

A general letter at the start of the claim is not, for example, enough to allow the release of personal data on all later occasions and we have the right to confirm the claimant's intentions whenever we feel that it is suitable.