The Rent Registration Service set rates for Local Housing Allowance for individual areas (these rates areas are known as Broad Rental Market Areas or BRMAs).
Dundee has only one BRMA and therefore one set of Local Housing Allowance Rates. The Rent Registration Service base Local Housing Allowance on the number of bedrooms that a tenant is allowed. The list below explains how many bedrooms a tenant is entitled to, allowing one bedroom for each of the following :-
- Every adult couple (an adult is someone aged 16 or over),
- Any other adult,
- Any two children (a child is someone under 16 years old) if they are both boys or both girls,
- Any two children under 10 years old no matter whether they are boys or girls,
- Any other child
The number of living rooms, kitchens and bathrooms a property has does not affect the rate of Local Housing Allowance.
The Local Housing Allowance rates start with a rate for one-bedroom in a property with shared facilities and upwards. (By shared facilities we mean where someone has their own bedroom but shares some or all of the other parts of the property, such as a kitchen or bathroom, with another person or people.) The maximum rate that can be awarded is the four bedroom rate.
If a tenant is under 35 years of age and lives alone, the one bedroom with shared facilities rate will apply. This rate also applies to couples and people over 35 who choose to live in shared accommodation.
Joint tenants will be entitled to a rate of Local Housing Allowance based on each individual tenant's family, plus any non-dependants, subtenants or boarders they share their home with. This means that joint tenants in the same property may qualify for different rates of Local Housing Allowance.
Local Housing Allowance depends on people's income, and we work out a person's entitlement in the same way as Housing Benefit.
