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Universal Credit: updating rent and service charges
Let Universal Credit know when your rent and service charge change
Let Universal Credit (UC) know when your rent and service charge changes
Your weekly or monthly rent and service charges are reviewed annually and will change this year on Monday 1st April 2025 for monthly tenancies and Monday 7th April 2025 for weekly tenancies.
It is important to let Universal Credit know about this straight after the change to make sure you get paid the right amount of Universal Credit. If you are late reporting the changes, Universal Credit will not usually backdate payments.
When do I need to complete these changes?
All changes need to be made once they have happened, not before. You will need to update your journal to complete your new rental amount details on or soon after:
1st April if your rent is charged monthly
7th April if your rent is charged weekly
This should not be done early, doing this early will impact your claim and result in duplicate requests being required.
What do you need to do?
Complete the ‘Confirm your housing costs’ To-Do in your Universal Credit online account after your rent has changed.
You must not use the ‘Report a change of circumstances’ process to Universal Credit about your rent change
- You will have received a message telling you that you have a task to complete, log into your Universal Credit account.
- Click on your To-Do list and you should have a task to ‘Report changes to your housing costs’ – click on that option.
Date of change
You will answer Yes to this question.
Rent
You will be asked if you are still charged weekly or monthly for your rent.
The frequency you pay your rent will not have changed, so you will answer yes to this.
You will then be asked for your new rent. You can get this information from your annual rent change letter sent to you.
Eligible service charges
This will ask if you are still charged weekly or monthly for your service charges.
Again, the frequency you pay your service charge will not have changed, so you will answer yes to this.
You will then need to confirm the amount of your new service charges per week or month. You can get this information from your annual rent change letter sent to you.
Frequently asked questions
I am struggling financially and finding it difficult to pay my rent
If you are struggling to make ends meet, we are here to help you get back on track in any way we can.
Call us on 0345 141 4663 or use our financial inclusion team self-referral form for free financial support.
If you are currently getting a Transitional Element (TE) as part of your Universal Credit award, please note that reporting an uplift in your Housing Costs will reduce your TE. This is due to the Universal Credit (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2014 and not a decision made by Home Group.
When will Home Group verify my change?
Our income collections team will be aiming to complete more than 600 individual verifications each day. These will be prioritised depending on the due date of the request.
This will be based on when the rent change has been submitted and when your next payment is due. We have over 22,000 customers nationally that will each be reporting their rent change.
How will I know the change has been verified?
Once Home Group verify the change you will be instantly notified via your journal.
What if I don’t know my rent costs?
You would have recently received a letter from us detailing the changes to your rent. If you cannot find this information, please contact us.
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