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We can make a Discretionary Housing Payment in special circumstances to give you extra help with your rent or Council Tax or both.
These payments are not designed to be a source of long-term income and it is important to us that we help you to avoid needing this payment in the future. Therefore, the vast majority of awards will be for a limited period only.
When we award a DHP, we expect you to take some actions to help to improve your situation with our support and will talk to you about what these actions could be. This could include finding work, debt advice, or finding more affordable accommodation.
We treat every claim individually. The overall amount of extra payment is restricted by government limits.
We can only consider making a Discretionary Housing Payment if one of the following applies:
And
We can only consider the Discretionary Housing Payment if your circumstances justify extra financial help.
What we are unlikely to pay for
Apply for a discretionary housing or exceptional hardship payments online, or alternatively you can contact us by one of the following methods:
We will look at the details and decide whether we can award you the Discretionary Housing Payment.
If we need more information before making a decision, we may telephone or write to you to ask for more information or for you to provide evidence.
We will write and tell you how much you will be paid and how long you will go on receiving it, the payment will be for a set time depending on the reason for the award. We may reduce or stop the award if your circumstances change or if we reach the government spending limit.
We will write to you and explain our decision.
You can ask us to look at our decision again; if you want us to look at our decision again, you will need to write to us and explain why you think our decision is wrong, within 1 month of the decision being made. If we look at your claim again, it will be by a different member of staff who has not dealt with your claim before.