UK Landlord Forum / Life

I let out my property for rent to a tenant about a month before Xmas.  The lady is not working and she has three children who were in care at that time – she says they are still in care.  (She split from her partner & got custody of the kids).  At the time of letting the property out, she managed to convince me that she does not have enough money to pay any rent and promised me that she will be able to pay rent once she gets Housing Benefit.   She also promised me that she will apply for Housing Benefit asap and that it was just a case of transferring the payments from her old property (where she was also paying rent, to my property).  Foolishly, I took pity on her (single mum with 3 kids) and decided to give the keys to the property to her.

She has now been living there for about 6 weeks and keeps telling me that she has not heard anything about her Housing Benefit claim from the council, and when I call the council, they say that they can't discuss the application with me because the tenant has instructed them not to do so.

Can you please advice what I should do in these circumstances?

Thanks in advance for your response.

you need to issue eviction notice if youve never had rent or deposit?

meet the teant and then ring housing benefit in front of her and ask her to authorise them to speak to you.
if she is that hard faced and she wont then you should issue eviction notice rapidly.

if she lets you speak to housing benfit about her case then ask them if they have paid any money to her and when and how much. get dates etc. then tell housing benefits that she is  weeks in arrears and that you want direct payment. you need to get them to send a safeguard form. (thats what they call it in my area). the form requests that hb is paid direct to the landlord.
get the form sent to you directly not her. and then fill it in with her. she will need to let her put down reasons why she cannot manage her money she is in debt or has drink or drugs problem. if she doesnt play ball with this then tell her she must leave. issue notice of eviction anyway to cover yourself.  you can claim direct hb after 8 weeks anyway.

also if she isnt paying rent make sure you have all the meter readings as she may not being paying the bills either.

in future tell all you tenants that if they miss one payment then you will issue notice immediately to cover yourself. if they dont like it they wont move in but hey thats all the warning sign you need. if i have doubts about a tenant paying me i actually take the notice of eviction with me to pick up the rent...

I had temant -same problem but benefit came through after 7/8 weeks