Housing benefit change - can I get it backdated?

[Lucyand2]

We moved into our rented house over a year and a half ago now and we applied for housing benefit,etc, because DP is on a very low wage.
Despite the house being the cheapest one we could find they have docked us £10 a week because of the size of the house. The house is £500 PCM and has three bedrooms which is deemed as too large because we only have one child. We explained this was the cheapest we could get (everywhere else we looked was over £550 for a 2 bedroom house!) but they didn't seem to care.
Last month they decided not to take this money off us anymore because the rental officer had made a new decision. Our council is useless and this whole thing has made me very angry as if they've decided now that it isn't unreasonable then surely it wasn't when we moved in and we shouldn't have had all that money taken off us.
Is it possible to get this backdated by the council? I know that if it was our mistake they would have no problem chasing us for money!

Have you received a letter from the rent officer stating that the rent is now fair? I'm just wondering how you know that they now deem it to be a fair rent.

I would say that there is no harm in asking for them to back-date it but they may only do it from the date they changed their minds. It could be that a new policy was introduced, or a new rent officer.

I would be asking "why" it was now deemed fair. Have you got the name of the person who deals with your claim? I would make it a priorty to ring and get it sorted.

To be honest, I think it's worth a shot. We've tried stuff like that, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If you have the time and energy then go for it.