Housing association issues?

[Halli2020]

Hello everyone, I am a housing association tenant and hoping for some advice, anyone that knows anything about this stuff? So I am looking to swap my property to another property to be closer to family (if you didn't know housing associations are able to swap with other council/housing association tenants). So my housing association have mentioned that I am in rent arrears, my tenancy is a pay weekly tenancy, but because I currently claim housing benefit this is paid monthly. So say I paid my rent on the 1st of the monthly, a week later I would be a week in arrears... All very confusing.

So the new landlord I am wanting to move to have received my reference that says I am in arrears because of my pay weekly tenancy and me doing the monthly thing! Is this normal? This doesn't seem right to me, because if I'm paying my rent monthly I'm not in arrears?

Any advice would be grateful. As the reference could now potentially affect my move. The housing association I'm hoping to move to are going to call my current landlord so hopefully they can get more information about how this is worked out!! Very stressed as want to move :( thankyou everyone for reading!! I hope I make sense

So you are paying monthly in arrears, rather than monthly in advance?
(I.e. you paid on 1st of Feb, but that was for January's rent in arrears, not February's rent in advance?)

Can you save up and pay extra so you are paying in advance instead, then reapply?

@AwkwardPaws27 So technically on the 1st March I pay my month's rent in full, the following week I would owe a weeks worth of rent because of my pay weekly tenancy. This won't change until I pay a month in advance, I am currently paying extra on top of my rent as it is to get my account a month in advance, I would struggle to pay the rent in advance including deposit on new place and removal costs. I just can't understand why this wasn't stated on my reference if you see what I mean? So if I moved on the 1st of the month I would owe any rent, my rent account would be back to £0.00 balance. Thankyou for replying :)

@AwkwardPaws27 that will be correct as that’s how benefits are paid unfortunately. Think it will be difficult for anyone on such a low income that their full rent is paid by benefits to save up enough to basically have a full months rent spare so they’re never ever in arrears.

You’re right OP, they should take this into account rather than just saying you owe money (making it seem like you have chosen not to pay it). It isn’t your fault. That’s just how benefits worked and have always worked, they’re always a month behind.

I guess it's better to get ahead first, as if you moved on 1st March, you'd need to pay 1 lot of rent to your current place (in arrears) and a new lot of rent to the new place (in advance) on that day.

Unless you can get agreement to pay the new place in arrears too?