Questions regarding my ESA managed Migration to UC

Hi, I have read the guides, so apologies if I missed anything in there, but I do not believe my situation is covered, and I phoned the Citizens Advice line for help to claim UC (0800 144 8444) but I am not sure and want to ask here about some specifics about my situation.

Essentially, back in 2021, I moved from a home I had in a shared house in East London for over a decade, and I moved to another city outside London just before the SDP gateway closed in January 2021.

I have since been informed that I may be facing potential homelessness by my current landlord possibly wanting to evict me in the near future (where I am a lodger) where I am currently living (outside of London), I therefore was looking for an opportunity to move back to London into the old house that I rented (renting a room in a shared house in London), without this move affecting my Transitional Protection from Managed Migration and having the new higher rent and higher LHA amount in London allow me to update my tenancy agreement to the new address to get the higher housing element for the new rent in London without it depleting any of my estimated £236.72 in estimated Transitional Protection that I was told I can be expected to get according to what CAB estimated yesterday when I phoned them on the Help to Claim line for UC.

I have recently received the Managed Migration letter (well it’s the reminder letter since I did not seem to get the letter that they claim they sent out back in July), this reminder letter says I have until 5 October 2025 to make my claim to Universal Credit it says is my deadline date.

I am on Income Related ESA and Housing Benefit (and these are the two benefits that are listed on the managed migration letter as being the two benefits that will end soon and for which why I need to claim Universal Credit to replace them).

I was of the understanding that if I moved council area to a new tenancy after the SDP gateway closed on 27 January 2021, then it would mean less Transitional Protection and I would actually get a “Transitional Element” instead when going via Natural Migration, which is less than the Transitional Protection that the UC Managed Migration supposedly allows one to get when using Managed Migration to UC.

I asked the CAB Help to claim adviser several detailed questions regarding my situation and circumstances, and I asked him if there is a window of opportunity for me to get my old landlord to rent a room to me in my old shared house (or potentially find a new landlord in London), and due to me currently getting the SDP (Severe Disability Premium) in my Legacy IR-ESA and therefore my Housing Benefit is calculated using the 1-Bedroom rate maximum of LHA (Local Housing Allowance) in my current BRMA (Broad Rental Market Area) area, even though I am in a room in a shared house (as it written in the Housing Benefit guidance manual, Page 30, 2.080).

I am of the understanding that Universal Credit appears to also allow getting up to the one-bedroom LHA rate for the BRMA that I am renting in, as far as I read it, since as I read it, I meet all of the requirements for getting the one-bed rate even for a room in a shared house, which are: 1. Being over 35 years old, 2. Being single and 3. Being without any dependents.

Therefore I was thinking if it is possible for me to time my move to move to London so that I can offer a landlord a rent amount that they will accept for a room that will get me accepted even though I am DSS tenant, which may require me to offer to pay a higher rent than the advertised rent (providing that what I agree to as the monthly rent is under the LHA 1-bedroom rate for the BMRA area that the address is located in, so that it will cover the whole rent with no shortfall for me to cover).

The advisor on Citizens Advice said that I could do this, and have the rent element updated to pay up to that maximum one-bed rate for the rent for the room in my old HMO I lived at I want to go back to.
However he said I should submit my UC claim first, and then I would have up to a month to move to the room in London with a signed tenancy to show this, and then for me to update my circumstances with the new tenancy in London and the higher rent by updating UC over the online account journal.

The help to claim UC Citizens Advice advisor said that the rent at the end of the first assessment period, which is a month following the date of the UC claim he said, that it would mean that I can get housing element of up to the £1,439.97 one-bedroom rate limit for the BRMA LHA area in Hackney in London, and that this would not erode or otherwise affect the £236.72 Transitional Support amount that they estimated I would get from moving from IR-ESA (Support Group) and Housing Benefit over to Universal Credit via Managed Migration letter that I received.

I thought that perhaps it could be possible by me moving to the new address before submitting the UC managed migration process by submitting the UC application, and then simply submitting the UC claim 1 or 2 days after I have moved to London, and having it somehow be taken as my current rent as it would take the day before what my circumstances were, however the CAB adviser said that doing it this way could mean that as the Housing Benefit would technically be seen to have ended the day before I moved house to London to start the new tenancy, that it would mean that my HB amount would not be taken into account at all when calculating Transitional Protection amount.

However, I am wondering, that surely it would be possible to simply use what I thought was the one month time period after a change happens to report it (and with there being no gap between when I stopped occupying the old home and when I took up residence in the new home as I could move home on the day the new tenancy starts by directly moving there).

Also, in this case the reporting the change of circumstance (new address after moving back to London) could maybe be allowed to be done as part of the new UC claim when using the Managed Migration letter to start a move to Universal Credit, and therefore would have had no requirement to start a new Housing benefit claim in the new Council Area (as would have been the case before), as I could possibly just do it as part of the UC managed migration process due to having received the Migration Notice letter (for UC Managed Migration), without this it being classed as a “natural migration” due to change of circumstances triggering a UC migration.

I guess that I may be sort of asking in a way, if it possible to still trigger natural migration after having being served the Managed Migration letter, if a change happens that would have forced “natural migration” as the only option before the Managed Migration letter was received?

I am quite confused, and I am sorry if this is a lot of writing.
I also think that it should be legal for me to offer over asking rent (advertised rent) to a landlord before the new Renters’ Rights Bill comes into law after it gets Royal Assent, but that is yet to happen.

I am just concerned about becoming homeless where I am now, since I am a lodger as far as housing law is concerned and this gives me little rights, even after the Renters’ Rights Bill becomes law.
So if I can get into a tenancy that will be protected under the Renters’ Rights bill, that is an added sense of security, in addition to it being in an an area of the country I really want to return to if possible and ideally if it does not immediately eat up my Transitional Protection in UC managed migration process.

Kind regards,
cascade

P.S. thankyou for the replies to my other threads, as I may have forgotten to reply saying thankyou for those. I find this forum fantastic.