How we pay your benefit

Manchester Housing tenants and Northwards Housing tenants

We always pay your Housing Benefit straight into your rent account. We will pay it once a week on Tuesdays.

Housing Association tenants

• We can send you a crossed cheque every four weeks for the four weeks that have just passed; or
• We can pay your benefit directly into your bank account every four weeks; or
• We can send your benefit straight to your landlord:
  • if you ask us to; or
  • if you owe eight weeks' or more rent; or
  • if we decide it's in your best interests to do so.

Tenants of private landlords

If you are a tenant of a private landlord and you have been receiving Housing Benefit continuously since before 7 April 2008 you usually have a choice about how we pay your benefit:

• We can send you a crossed cheque every four weeks for the four weeks that have just passed; or
• We can pay your benefit directly into your bank account every four weeks; or
• We can send your benefit straight to your landlord. As long as we are satisfied that your landlord is acting properly over benefit matters we will pay them direct:
  • if you ask us to; or
  • if you owe eight weeks' or more rent; or
  • if we decide it's in your best interests to do so.

If you are a tenant of a private landlord and you are getting Housing Benefit under the Local Housing Allowance rules, you cannot choose how we pay your benefit. We must always pay Housing Benefit into your bank account unless there are special reasons that mean we can consider paying to someone else, like your landlord.