How to send us evidence to support your housing benefit claim
Every five to six years, the calendar makes it so we have 53 Mondays instead of the usual 52. This coming financial year, 2024 / 2025, is one of those special years.
If you get Universal Credit, the Department for Work and Pensions will only pay for 52 weeks of your rent in a year. In a 53 week financial year, this means there will be one week of rent that will not be covered by Universal Credit.
Find out what we're doing to help and what to do if you're affected and already struggling with the cost of living.
You do not need to own a computer or a scanner to send us information or ask a question.
You can use your smartphone, tablet or laptop to complete our forms online. You can take pictures of all the evidence we need and send them to us online.
How to send us evidence to support your claim
You can submit evidence at the same time as you apply for benefit or tell us about a change of circumstances. At the end of each form you can upload evidence.
If you need to send us evidence after you’ve filled in a new claim or change of circumstances form, you can send us evidence using our benefit upload form.
Just follow these easy steps:
-
Take a picture of the document you want to upload. Please check the picture before it is submitted to make sure that all details can be seen clearly.
-
Go to the benefit upload form.
-
Follow the instructions online to upload the pictures of all of your documents.
-
Tick the ‘submit’ button to send the information to us.
You will then get a unique number confirming that we have received the form.
Get help submitting evidence
If you don't have internet access or you need help to submit your evidence online you can get support from:
Advice Lewisham
Advice Lewisham have a freephone line you can call for help and advice Monday-Friday. Details of their opening hours are on their website.
Post evidence to us
If you wish you can still post evidence to us.
What happens next
We will process your request as quickly as we can and within 10 working days wherever possible.
We cannot enter into any communication about your request until 10 working days has passed. This gives us the best possible chance of processing all requests as quickly as we can.