1. The policy or procedure for checking the legitimacy of service charges where a resident is claiming benefits to cover them.
We do not have a written procedure for this. Each rental liability is checked when first received. If it is felt that further information is required in regards to a service charge a request would be made to either the claimant and/or landlord. A decision would then be made on whether the service charge was legitimate and whether it was eligible or ineligible for Housing Benefits in line with the Housing Benefit Regulation and using DWP guidance.

2. The number of housing benefit or universal credit claimants whose service charges are paid directly to their landlord, including where this is a single payment incorporating rents plus service charges.
We are unable to provide this information within the statutory 18hour time limit (Section 12). We currently have approximately 496 Housing Benefit claims that are paid to Landlords that may potentially have eligible service charges that are included in their rent. To identify which of these claims has a rent that contains an eligible service charge would take in excess of 100 hours. This is because if we look at each claim to find this information which could take approx. 15 mins for each claim this would take 124 hours.

3. The proportion of the above whose landlords are housing associations, if recorded.
We are unable to provide this information within the statutory 18hour time limit (Section 12). Out of the 496 claims approximately 344 are paid to Housing Associations. However unless the above piece of work is completed, of over 100 hours, we could not say how many of these have eligible service charges included in their eligible rent figure.