Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) are payments we can give you if your Housing Benefit or Council Tax benefit is less than the full amount of your rent or Council Tax. Unfortunately, we cannot give a DHP to cover the cost of things included in your rent, like fuel, water or food charges.

• If you get Housing Benefit you can claim a DHP to help pay your rent
• If you get Council Tax Benefit you can claim a DHP to help pay your Council Tax.

But we must be satisfied that you are having difficulties with your finances and need more help with your housing costs.

Call our customer service centre on 0161 912 2220 or download a Discretionary Housing Payments claim form.

Fill in all the details and return the form to:

Benefits Service
PO Box 65
Sale
M33 6BY

We look at things like:

• Your total income
• Whether you have any savings
• Whether anyone else in the house is able to help financially
• Whether you have any loans or debts still to pay
• Whether you could rearrange your finances to ease the situation
• Whether you or your family have any special circumstances, like ill health or disability
• We ask you to give us a lot of information, and if we need more we'll write to you for it
• We might also ask you to call in to see us if we need to discuss your claim in more detail.

How much you get depends on your circumstances, and we look at each case individually. We can pay DHPs for different periods of time. However, there is no guarantee that you will actually get a payment.

If your application is successful, we will usually pay your DHP with any Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit that you get, although DHPs are not payments of Housing Benefit or Council Tax Benefit.

If you disagree with our decision, you should write to us straight away. We will look at your application again and write to you with our decision.

If your circumstances change, you must tell us, in writing, within one month.

We will then look at the DHP we awarded and see whether it needs to be changed. We might be able to pay you more DHP. But, if we think you should get less, you might have to pay back some or all of the DHP we have paid.