Evidence and proofs

Your tenant may be asked to provide evidence to support their claim. This means they will have to provide documents that prove certain parts of their claim i.e. if they work we will want to see their wage slips. Your tenant may be asked to provide documents while making a new claim or during their claim if they have a change. When dealing with their claim, we will decide exactly what is needed. A guide to what we normally need to see is below.

Housing

All evidence provided must be original documents. We cannot accept photocopies. If your tenant does not wish to post valuable documents to us, they can bring them into the Civic Centre where our staff will check and scan the documents while they wait. Any sensitive documents sent to us will be returned using Royal Mail recorded delivery. Your tenant can also ask for a Home Visit, where our visiting officer will come to their home and check their documents.

Remember, the quicker your tenant can get in their form with all the evidence, the quicker we can help them with their rent and Council tax!

Rent

We will need to see evidence of your tenant's rental liability. This will normally be their current tenancy agreement. If you and your tenant do not have a formal tenancy agreement, you can download a and complete a  Proof of rent form [61kb] or contact us and we will send you one. On this form you can enter details of your tenant's rent.

Identity and residency

We need to make sure that your tenant is the person that they say they are. We also have to confirm the National Insurance Number for them and any partner. We must also be sure that your tenant lives at the address they are claiming for. Acceptable evidence includes:

• DWP benefit award letter
• P45, P60 or other HMRC notification
• Wage slips or letter from employer
• Current utility bill
• Passport
• Full driving licence
• IND identity card or Home Office immigration letter

Household

We need to confirm that any partner or dependant children that your tenant is claiming for is living with them. Evidence we can use includes

• Utility bills in joint names for their partner
• Child Benefit or Child Tax Credit notifications for their children
• DWP benefit award letter
• Full driving licence

Income

The precise evidence will depend on your tenant's income. Some common examples are:

• Benefit income - award letter (we can check their entitlement to some benefits directly with the Department for Work and Pensions)
• Earnings - payslips covering the last 5 if paid weekly, last 3 if paid fortnightly, last 2 if paid monthly or 4-weekly.
• Self employed earnings - this will vary depending on their business
• Private pensions - the last letter from their pension provider or evidence of payments into their bank account

Capital

When your tenant first claims, we will need to check all the capital that they and any partner have. We will need to see the last two months transactions for all accounts (current accounts, savings accounts, ISAs, PEPs etc), even if they are overdrawn.

Other types of capital could include:

• E-bank accounts and accounts like Paypal
• Premium Bonds 
• Income Bonds 
• National Savings Certificates 
• Stocks and shares 
• Unit Trusts 
• Savings schemes 
• Money held in a Trust 
• Land or Property, other that the house they live in
• Cash under the mattress!