Reporting changes
in your rent

As a Universal Credit claimant, it is your responsibility to report any changes in the rent you are charged, which affects how much benefit you receive. If you do not report the changes to your rent when it increases, you will miss out on extra entitlement; if your rent goes down you will be overpaid benefit.

For annual rent changes which happen in April, Universal Credit should add a ‘to-do’ to your account to report the rent change. Click this and follow the instructions and provide the information requested.

It is important you do not do this until the day your rent actually changes or as soon as possible after – if you do it too soon you will need to do it again. We will send you a letter in February or March every year to confirm what your new rent will be from April; this will confirm what date it applies from.

If your rent changes at any other time (for example, you have moved home), follow the process below to report the change:

You can report your rent change on your online Universal Credit account.

• Log in and click on your home tab,
• Choose report a change of circumstances. Then choose Housing
• Now enter in all of your details.
• Make sure you pick the correct date for when it changed.
  • For weekly tenancies, this is the first Monday in April.
  • For monthly tenancies, it is the first day of April.
  • In 2024 this is the same for both, i.e. Monday 1 April 2024.

NB: If you rent a market rent property from us, you should still say that you are with a housing association/social landlord. If you say you rent privately you might get less benefit than you are entitled to.