How to update your annual rent charge on your Universal Credit account
Depending on how Places for People charges your rent, you will see a 'Confirm your housing costs' on your online account on:
- 1 April 2024 for those that are charged rent monthly
- 1 April 2024 for all those are charged rent weekly.
Just because you receive your Universal Credit payment monthly, it does not mean that your rent is charged monthly.
You can check the frequency of your rent charge in the letter we sent you. This will normally be on the first page, like the examples below:
This will also tell you the date of the change so you can use this to check what day you will receive the ‘Confirm your housing costs’ to-do.
Once you receive this in your to-do list you will need to update it with the new rent charge figures.
These can also be found in the rent charge letter under the section ‘Charge Breakdown/Details’.
The information required is the charges marked (HBE) and for Universal Credit purposes is broken down into two bits of information.
Rent – This is marked as property rent in the charge breakdown
Eligible service charges – This is the total of all charges marked HBE, excluding the property rent charge.
Not all properties will have service charges so do not worry if your letter only shows property rent. It may also have been broken down to show rent and total eligible service charges already.
Tip: You will notice that there is a total for all HB charges near the bottom of the charge breakdown/detail. Rather than add up all of the charges separately, you could subtract the property rent figure from this total to give the total for all eligible service charges.
You now have the information required to complete the ‘Confirm your housing costs’ to-do
Once you open the ‘to-do’ you will work through it as per the screens below.
In this example the to do is for a customer charged weekly rent as the date of change it is referring to is 1 April 2024.
Click Yes and then continue.
This next screen shows what you have previously told them is your weekly rent charge.
Click yes and enter the new rent figure and then continue.
In this screen it shows what you have previously told them is your weekly eligible service charge total.
Click yes and enter the new eligible service charge total and then continue.
Please only use the ‘Confirm your housing costs’ to report your annual rent charge and do not use the ‘Changes of circumstances’ option in your online account. Doing so will delay us confirming your new annual rent.
Due to the volume of Housing Cost confirmations that we will receive, please allow up to one calendar month to verify your rent changes. Please do not re-submit once you have confirmed your rent charges as this only creates duplicates and will delay our processing time.
Please do not call us or email us for updates on your claim as this is unnecessary and we will not be able to give you an update. Please be assured that any delays in verifying your claim resulting in an underpayment will be backdated by Universal Credit on your next payment.