You must report all changes to your circumstances immediately. Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support claims are amended from the Monday following the date of your change. This means that if you delay in contacting us you may receive too much benefit, which you will have to pay back.
You do not have to wait for the change to happen. If you know you are going to be moving address or starting a new job for example you can let us know in advance.
All the forms below deal with claims for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support at the same time.
Changes in your income
We need you to let us know:
- if you start or stop getting Income Support, Jobseekers Allowance or Employment Support Allowance
- if you stop getting Universal Credit and start to receive State Retirement Pension
- if any other benefit starts or stops or the amount changes
- if a tax credit like Working Tax Credit or Child Tax Credit starts or stops, or if the amount changes
- if your wages go up or down
- if your state retirement pension or private pension goes up or down
- if someone else starts or stops getting carer's allowance for looking after you
You can still claim Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support if you are working. You can be entitled if you work for an employer or if you are self employed.
Moving house
If you move address within the borough we can continue your claim for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support at your new address.
We need you to complete a change of address claim form. We will use some of the information about your income which you have already provided to us, but we need to know about the property you are moving to. The form tells you what evidence we need you to provide. If your income and capital have not changed we will not need to see proof of these again.
If you move outside the borough, we need to know you have left the address in this area, but you will need to make a new claim for benefit with the council of the area you are moving to.
Report a change in your circumstance
Use the change of circumstances form below to report the following changes.
- changes to your benefits
- changes to your rent, service charges, landlord, or move to a different room in the same property. If you are a tenant of Bury Housing Services, you do not need to tell us about any rent changes.
- income has increased or decreased
- starting or stopping work
- changes to pension
- changes to savings, investments, or property
- going outside of Great Britain for more than 4 weeks
- someone is moving in or out of your household
- child turning 18
- new baby
- someone has passed away
- change to childcare costs
- going into a care home, hospital, or sheltered accommodation
- report any other change in circumstance for example child leaves school, you are in prison, you are now a student or finished a course etc.
You will need to provide evidence of what has changed, this could be
- changes to the benefits you will need to provide any benefit letters to support your change. If there are any changes to your Universal credits you must upload printouts, screenshots of your award from your online journal. This must include all elements such as personal element and housing element, all income used in your award, all deductions, and the amount payable to you. These will show on your online journal under 'Home', then 'Payments'.
- changes to your rent you will need to provide your full tenancy agreement or rent letter from landlord.
- changes to your income, if it has increased or decreased you will need to provide 2 months or 5 weeks of consecutive payslips
- if you are starting or stopping work,you will need your P45 and final payslip if work has stopped. Your new contract or first payslip if you have started a new job.
- changes to pension you will need all pension letters showing your change
- changes to savings, investments, or property you will need all evidence relating to investments or properties. This can include letters from solicitors and 2 months bank statement for changes to your savings.
- going outside of Great Britain for more than four weeks you will need to provide flight/ reservation email/tickets showing dates
- change to childcare costs you will need childcare charges/invoice from your childcare provider
- going into a care home, hospital, or sheltered accommodation you will need to confirm your move this can include hospital, GP letter or housing letter
- someone moving into your household you will need to confirm their details and income
Please complete the form with all supporting evidence. If insufficient evidence is provided, this may take us longer to recalculate your award.
We may suspend a claim when we have been told about a change, we do this to try to prevent any overpayments. It is an offence not to tell us about any change of circumstance that affects your benefit, you could receive too much benefit and must pay it back.