Your money

YOUR MONEY SUPPORTING YOU THIS SUMMER

Cost of Living Crisis

Support for Barnet residents

If you are struggling to pay your rent or fuel bills, you can call our Income Collection Team who may be able to help. Phone: 020 8080 6587 Website: barnethomes.org/contact-us

We provide advice on:

• Paying your rent, including arrears management and budgeting • Benefit and income maximisation - making sure you are claiming all that you are entitled to • Energy advice and tips, and how to access national support schemes. • Financial support - how you can manage debt, and which other routes of financial support are available for you.

Barnet Homes will be offering Free Budgeting Advice Sessions from June 2022 onwards. If you are interested in attending a session please contact your Income Collection Officer or email talktous@barnethomes.org, where an appointment or session will be offered to you.

Getting DWP benefits or Tax Credits? Then this will affect you… Between May 2022 and late 2024 persons of working age claiming legacy benefits (Income Support, Income Based Jobseekers Allowance (JSA-IB), Income Related Employment and Support Allowance (ESAIR), Housing Benefit (HB) and Tax Credits) will receive notification letters from the DWP explaining that they need to make a claim for Universal Credit (UC) within a threemonth deadline date. Couples will be sent separate notification letters. Pensioners (who don’t have a partner of working age) and supported housing customers will continue to be entitled to receive HB once they migrate to UC. People claiming UC under the managed migration process are entitled to apply for an ‘Advance Payment’

due to the five week delay in receiving their first UC payment, and a UC top up payment called ‘transitional protection’ if their UC entitlement will be less than the amount they receive for their legacy Benefits. It is important to make your UC claim once notified by the DWP as your legacy Benefits will automatically stop after three months and you may lose the transitional protection, if you were entitled. The UC claim is made and managed online.

It is important once you are notified by the DWP to seek help in good time if needed to make a UC claim or if you don’t have a device to make the UC application, Barnet Homes and our partners at BOOST can help you with this. If you need assistance, please contact us on 020 8610 3538.

UK Search The Barnet Group (TBG) has appointed UK Search to manage its former tenant arrears. If you have any arrears on former tenancies or leave arrears on your current tenancy when you move out, you may be contacted by UK Search to repay these arrears. UK Search are working on behalf of TBG and repayment agreements should be made with them if the arrears are owed.

Our Income Collection Team are here to help, call them on 020 8080 6587