Help with Housing Costs 2025-2026: Advising on housing benefit, universal credit and pension credit

Essential reference tool for anyone working in local councils, registered social landlords, advisers, tribunal members and housing professionals.

This new guide explains who can get help towards personal housing costs. It applies throughout Great Britain and is used by renters, owners, shared owners, local councils, social and private landlords, welfare and finance advisers, tribunal members and housing professionals.

The guide covers both working age and pension age claims for universal credit, housing benefit, state pension credit, support for mortgage interest and council tax rebates. This edition gives the rules from April 2025, including:

• Help for social housing tenants, private tenants, owners and shared owners
• Who can get benefit towards rent and/or service charges
• Transferring (or migrating) from the old benefits to universal credit
• Transitional protection to avoid you being worse off when you transfer
• The rules for supported housing and temporary accommodation
• How the bedroom tax and local housing allowance affect you
• How the two-child limit and the benefit cap work
• How to calculate all the benefits
• How other adults in your home can affect you
• How much income and capital you can have and still get benefit
• Who can get benefit during an absence from home or on two homes
• Support for mortgage interest for owners and share owners
• Council tax exemptions, discounts, disability reductions and rebates
• Discretionary housing payments
• How to claim and when you will be paid benefit
• Payments to landlords and mortgage lenders
• Repaying overpayments of benefit
• Asking for a reconsideration and how to appeal
• The rules for migrants and recent arrivals to the UK