Changes in circumstances

If you are claiming Housing Benefit or Council Tax Support, you need to tell us about changes in your circumstances straight away.

A change could affect how much you can receive. 

The kind of changes you need to tell us about are listed below.

• If your income, or the income of anyone in your household, goes up or down.
• If you start working, stop working, change jobs or your wages go up or down.
• If your savings go up or down.
• If anyone moves in or moves out of your home.
• If you move home or your rent changes.
• If you (or anyone who lives with you) are going to be away from your property for more than 4 weeks.
• If your children leave school / full-time education or start work.
• If you or anyone living with you start or stop receiving any other state benefit such as Income Support, Job Seekers Allowance, Employment Support Allowance, Tax Credits, Child Benefit, Pension Credit, Disability Living Allowance, Personal Independence Payments or Universal Credit. 

This list is not exhaustive. 

Don’t delay telling us

• You need to tell us about any change in your circumstances which increases your benefit, within one calendar month of the change happening. Otherwise your benefit will only increase from the Monday after we receive the notification. This is unless you can show us that there was a very good reason for the delay.

• Failure to report a change in circumstances may result in an overpayment of benefit which will be recoverable from you.

• If you deliberately don’t tell us about a change in order to continue to receive benefit action may be taken against you. This includes prosecution in Court.