AIBU to think that the £400 should be paid to the landlord

[Collienova]

This is for situations where the rent includes the bills.

£400 energy payment: Fears renters with bills included will miss out www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62375576

I can’t quite see why the landlord should pay this to the tenant when they are paying the bills? Surely that would leave them no choice to increase the rent instead?

Is there something I’m missing?

Because they're paying the bills out of the extra rent they get monthly from the tenants. It's not coming out of the landlords pocket, so why should they charge the same amount of rent, to cover all the bills PLUS benefit from the £400 extra

The monthly rent + bills would be a set amount. Unless it was a very new contract with a commensurate rise in rent to cover the rise in energy bills, the landlord would be hit by the increased bills rather than the tenant. YANBU

It's usually written into these contracts that the landlord can charge extra monthly if the bills go above what they pay towards them.

So in these scenarios there will be a lot of tenants missing our, or being hit twice as hard

I agree OP the payment should go to whoever is responsible for paying the bills, if it’s to cover utilities rising & the landlord pays the utilities why would it go to the tenant.

The landlord will have the increased bills so of course the landlord should get the payments!

What extra rent? The tenants are paying a set rent that includes utilities, so the payment goes to the person responsible for the utilities.

But that only works if they pay the landlord the amount they use every month (assuming like most now they are on a variable rate)

people with a tenancy which includes bills at a fixed rate are probably in a better situation than most at the moment when it comes to energy bills.

If the money goes straight to the landlord then they get to choose whether to offset it against the rising energy bills or pocket it and still demand increased payment from the tenant. It’s about landlords being arseholes - typical narrative, and I’m sure some are but I would say the majority will use it as intended.

A bigger problem is going to be transparency - given that bills are due to rise more than £400pa, landlords of properties that include energy bills are likely to have to increase rents even with the gov payment, which may well lead to arguments about whether or not they’ve factored in the £400 iyswim

But isn’t that assuming that the portion of the rent that should cover the bills covers the rent increases?

This is exactly my point.

Whilst, it is the landlord who's paying and they have a fixed monthly payment.

Most tenancy agreements which include bill payments also include a clause saying the landlord can ask for more to cover for over spending on bills.

My bills are included in my rent (except council tax) and I agree with you. I never expected to receive this payment, I automatically just assumed it would go to my landlady as she pays the bills, so I was surprised when they said on the Jeremy Vine show yesterday that landlords have to pass it on to tenants by law (although it says different in that article) but I wouldn't have the heart to ask her for it, she's so lovely and hasn't put my rent up for 10 years.

I have an HMO - Ok, I will get £400, but that covers 6 separate tenants, and with the bills going up I’ll use it to offset those and try to avoid having to put their rents up for a bit longer. For £450 a month they get all their utilities plus super fast broadband and a cleaner so hopefully none of them will be expecting £400 each off me!

I think the only issue is with a PP said - transparency.

And some landlord pocketing the money and charging extra.

Hopefully they'll all be as decent as you. X

In this case you should be giving them £400 each, effectively you are acting as an energy reseller so it's up to you to pay it out and then try to claw the money back from the government.

I read that article and thought the person who is paying the electric bill should get the money too. I’d assume had her rent increased due to electric bill increase it would of said. It sounds like landlord has been swallowing increased costs.

@Dotjones are you insane?

What on earth are you going on about Dotjones?

HMO occupants also didn’t qualify for the £150 council tax energy rebate

I’m sorry but if that’s true it’s outrageous.

If the landlord is able to increase the rent to cover bills, then doubtless many will do that and still pocket the £400. So I agree it’s a problem.

I think it’s been done the way it has for ease of administration. It was really important also to make sure that two (or more) adult households didn’t get twice as much as single adult households- as the bills are the same and statistically single adult households are much more likely to be struggling. So I think that’s another reason they went straight to “per account”. It would have been shocking if married/ co habiting couples got twice what a single parent gets, for example.

But equally it also seems wrong to me that it should be paid for second and additional homes. That’s a choice not a necessity. So perhaps a less simplistic method of payment might have been better.

As others have said the issue is transparency and that some landlords are decent and others aren't.

I live in a HMO with 3 others and our rent is going up £75 each from September to cover increase in bills, so our landlord is getting £300 a month extra which should cover the increase in our energy bill. He hasn't mentioned anything about the £400 from the government to us yet but it would seem unfair if he then kept that as well.

I don't trust landlords so it should go to the tenants.

I manage student HMOs, a lot of which are inclusive of bills. The new academic year ones were signed up last October/November, prior to the large price hikes so their inclusive rent amount doesn't now effectively reflect the cost of providing their energy. The landlord cannot increase the rent for these tenants to reflect the higher cost of the utilities so will have to suck up the fact that they may well make a loss this year.

The tenants have a 'fair usage amount' written into their tenancy to encourage them to be responsible with the heating. If they go over that we can technically claw it back but in reality we don't usually as long as it's not a massive amount. Across a number of properties it usually evens out with some a bit under and some a bit over. All the landlords I know who have similar set ups were planning to increase the tenants' fair usage amount by the £400 so this means they are getting the benefit of the extra allowance to spend on heating.

If the landlord is forced to pay the £400 over to the tenants then the fair usage £ amount will stay the same and the tenants will find they are struggling to heat their house effectively and still stay within their fair usage limit which was set prior to the increases.

In theory the landlord would then have to claw the overspend back from the tenants at the end of their tenancy which seems a bit mad really.

If a Landlords energy bill for a property has gone up as much as mine has, then there’s no way it would be legal or even possible for the rent to increase by the same amount. So of course the payment should go to the landlord.

Why would the tenant need it if their bills are included in their rent and their rent has only gone up by a small amount that it would go up by on a yearly basis anyway?

Don’t be silly, this payment is for whoever is responsible for paying the bills, if that sits with the landlords then why should the tennant get it when they’re paying a set fee to cover utilities.