HMRC To Share Tenants' Income Details With Landlords

HMRC will share income information with social landlords to help them implement the government’s Pay to Stay rules. The Housing and Planning Bill says that while social landlords will have responsibility for ensuring tenants declare their incomes, HMRC will be given new powers to disclose data in order to allow landlords to verify the information and ensure they are charging the correct rents.  Social landlords will be given the power to require their tenants to declare what their household income is. However, the legislation also empowers HMRC to share information to ensure “declarations of income are correct”. It is not clear if HMRC would share information on individual tenants’ incomes under the legislation. The bill allows information to be shared between HMRC and landlords, via the secretary of state, or a body that would act as a ‘gatekeeper’ for this purpose. Read more on Inside Housing.

Tenant Anger over Plan to Share Personal Details

Plans to share a host of data on benefit claimants, including health records and IT literacy, with landlords and charities have been condemned by a national tenant organisation. Michael Gelling, chair of TAROE, said the government’s proposals for Universal credit claimants went ‘too far’ and were ‘very, very dangerous’. The DWP is consulting until 12 January on measures to allow sharing of information about claimants between the department, councils, housing associations, Citizens Advice bureaux, credit unions and charities. This is to enable organisations to provide support to claimants to stop them falling into arrears or struggling with debt. Data to be shared includes details of debts, benefits, health conditions, qualifications, and level of digital skills. Read more on Inside Housing.

Welfare Reform: New Regs Allow Councils to Share Data with Landlords

New powers that came in this month allow councils to share information with social landlords on who may be affected by the imminent welfare reforms - including the household benefit cap and the under-occupation penalties.  Powers in the Welfare Reform Act enable the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and local authority housing benefit teams to supply social security data to ‘qualifying persons’ for purposes connected with a welfare service.  The new regs prescribe social landlords as a qualifying person, for the purpose of receiving data about people who might be affected by the under-occupation cuts and the household benefit cap - both of which come in next April.  Read more on 24dash.