Moving house and claiming UC but dates overlap

Hello and hope you can help. I have recently migrated to UC and get help for rent. I pay my current rent at the beginning of the month but will get the keys to the new place in the middle which means I have around 3 weeks of paying for both properties until I fully move, this will give me time to move but my question is;
Will UC pay for both homes rent as it will overlap, or will I have to borrow it to cover the cost of the different dates? If anyone has the answer pls let me know as for the 3 weeks it will be quite a bit of money on top of the months rent and deposit in the new home.

Hi, I know it's outside the remit of this forum, and not sure if copy pasting a link to the Shelter website page on this matter is allowed on the forum, but apologies to the mods if I am not supposed to.

(Shelter are a charity that specialise in housing and homeless matters in the UK, and I found them amazing both phoning them and their website when I had to deal with homelessness, so I highly recommend them).

The Shelter link that covers this issue is here below:
england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/be...nefits_for_two_homes

(this link is for the Shelter page for people needing advice for housing located in England specifically, but you can change the advice to Scotland at the top of the page if you live there, since laws and regulations can vary between England and Scotland, and as for Wales and Northern Ireland I would just add to the google search adding in either "Wales" or "Northern Ireland" in the search on google for which specific part of the UK advice is required).

You can just google something along the lines of "can I get UC Housing Element on two homes" if the mods release my post after removing the URL link to the Shelter page above (which the mods are more than welcome to do this if they don't want URL web links in my post).

You can replace with the "UC Housing Element" in the search with "Housing Benefit" if that is what you get as with regards to Housing Benefit and the Housing Element of UC, whilst they are quite similar, they do have some differences as they are based on separate legislation).

My advice would be to read that Shelter page, and see if your situation fits one or more of the reasons listed there as a possible justification for a decision maker to allow the overlapping UC Housing Element.

As far as I am aware they only can do it for a maximum of 4 weeks, but I think that the reason of not being able to avoid the overlap (such as giving notice on old tenancy and needing to accept the new tenancy right away for a valid reason) is only a reason that can be used for Housing Benefit to get overlapping benefit for rent on two homes, and not under the Universal Credit regulations for the UC Housing Element as far as I read it, but you could contact Citizens Advice and/or Shelter to make sure.

Something that came to my mind just now, is that I do wonder if you have only just claimed UC and are still getting your Housing Benefit payments run on for 2 weeks, or the move overlap does cover some period that is paid by Housing Benefit at least to some percentage of the overlap period, then maybe you could still be eligible for using that reason ("you could not avoid an overlap with your 2 tenancies when you moved") to get help on the rent for two homes overlapping.... That could be a technicality of the regulations that may need to be looked into though and you may need to call Citizens Advice and/or Shelter to ask about this if you want to argue that you fulfil that requirement though.

Since Housing Benefit and Universal Credit are two separate pieces of Legislation, and maybe the above technical matter regarding the migration to UC first assessment period/HB run on timeframe relating to the overlapping housing costs for unavoidable overlap reason, maybe it has not even been argued yet by any claimant, so potentially it could be something that may have grounds for appeal if it has legal merit, but I would ask Citizens Advice or Shelter (or someone else who is specialised in this area) with regards to this to be sure if you believe this potentially applies to you.

I personally have successfully received overlapping Housing Benefit in the past for that reason of "you could not avoid an overlap with your 2 tenancies when you moved".

Hope this helps,

Regards,
cascade