Asking for a backdate

If you haven’t made your Housing Benefit claim on time we can consider to backdate your benefit.

Apply online to backdate your benefit claim

You will need to give us the following information:

• The date you want your Housing Benefit to start
• Details of your income, benefits, savings and rent for the period of the backdate – we will need to see original evidence of this, we cannot accept photocopies
• Details of who was in your household during the period of the backdate.

You must tell us why you didn’t claim sooner. You will have to show a good reason for not claiming earlier. You will need to show a good reason throughout the whole backdate period, although it does not need to be the same reason throughout.

Good reasons for not making a claim on time can include:

• You were ill
• You were in hospital
• You had a family crisis
• You were unavoidably away from home
• You thought you didn’t need to claim – you will need to tell us why
• You were advised not to claim – you will need to tell us who advised you
• You thought you were not allowed to claim, or would not get benefit – you will need to tell us why you thought this
• You did not understand you could claim, perhaps because of your age, your lack of experience of the system, difficulties with language or understanding documents – you will need to tell us what and how this affected you.

This is not an exhaustive list, but gives you an idea of what we can consider.