Your entitlement to Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Benefit is based on the information on your form. Your entitlement will change if your circumstances change.

During the period you have been granted Benefit, the details you have given about income, capital and the people who live with you may change. These changes may affect the amount of Benefit you are entitled to. If you have any changes in your family or financial circumstances, please use the forms we have available here to tell us about them. If you are not sure whether the change will affect your Benefit, tell us anyway.

Under the regulations, most changes in circumstances affect your Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Benefit from the Monday after they happen.

Benefit legislation says that you must inform us within one calendar month if you have a change in your circumstances.

If you do not tell us in time and the change is to your advantage, you will lose benefit. You will have to explain why you notified the change late.

If the change would result in less benefit then you will be required to repay any overpaid or excess benefit.

You will normally have to pay these back to the Council - so to avoid a large bill later, tell us about changes in circumstances as soon as they happen.

We will write to you and tell you how the change has affected your Housing Benefit and/or Council Tax Benefit - if at all. If we haven't written to you within 2 weeks of you telling us about a change, you should contact the office to find out if we have dealt with your letter.
If your Benefit isn't changed straight away, we could be paying you too much Benefit that you would have to repay later.