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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. 

Tell us about a change

Report a change of circumstances

You will need your benefit reference number, which you can find on any letters we have sent you. If you need to send us evidence of this change, you can upload digital photos or scanned images using the link above. 

If you don't know your benefit reference number you can tell us about a change via this link. However, it might take us a little bit longer to process the change this way. You will need to provide details of what has changed and when the change happened. You can also upload proof of the change (such as wage slips, bank statements etc) via this link.  

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.

Data matching

We sometimes match the data we hold about your claim with information held by Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This is to make sure your entitlement is correct. If there is a discrepancy and you have been overpaid, we will require this to be paid back. We may need to report this to the DWP if it looks like fraud may have taken place.