• need an overnight carer (or someone else in the household does)
• cannot share a bedroom due to disability
• have a disabled child who cannot reasonably share a room with a sibling.

What is the issue?

In the UC system, a claimant may be allowed an additional bedroom in both Social rented sector, to avoid the application of the BedroomTtax, and in Private rented sector, to increase the Local Housing Allowance used to calculate the eligible rent.

However, when someone makes a claim for UC, they are not specifically asked about whether:

• there is a requirement for an overnight carer
• they cannot share a bedroom with their partner due to disability, or
• a disabled child they are responsible for cannot share a bedroom.

As a result, the Housing Costs Element, and consequently the UC award, could be calculated incorrectly.

This may only come to light months or years later, when the claimant seeks benefit advice. 

The DWP usually asks the claimant to report this as a change of circumstances and only increase the Housing Costs Element from the date the issue is reported. However, advisers should consider whether the claimant satisfied the conditions for an extra bedroom from the date they claimed . If so, they should argue that the earlier award should be revised, rather than the need for an extra bedroom being treated as a change of circumstances and only affecting entitlement going forward.

Challenging the previous incorrect decision

If the claimant saitisfied the conditions for an extra bedroom from an earlier date, they should ask that the earlier decision is revised. 

Within 13 months?
If the claimant is within the 13 months of the decision^, then they can request a late Mandatory Reconsideration, also called an any ground revision. They should explain why they have not managed to challenge the decision earlier.

^This will normally be the first UC award statement that did not include additional housing costs element for the extra bedroom, even though it should have.

More than 13 months?
If more than 13 months have passed since the decision, then they will need to rely on 'any time revision' grounds, ie. that an extra bedroom was not included earlier due to an official error.

Arguments to support an extra bedroom could be:

• the claimant met the conditions for an additional bedroom entitlement at the time of the decision
•  relevant information was available to DWP, or could reasonably have been identified from information they already had,
• the DWP were aware that the claimant, their partner, or their child are in receipt of a disability benefit, 
• DWP failed to make sufficient enquiries to identify how many bedrooms the claimant should be allocated,
• disability-related needs were disclosed elsewhere on the UC claim