FAQs

If you are in receipt of Universal Credit you will need to report this rent change to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This needs to be done on, or soon after, 1 April 2024, via the online DWP Portal. You will need to select the “UC Account Home Page” and choose the “Report a change of circumstances” option, then within that option you will need to select the “Where you live and what it costs” option. You are responsible for ensuring that you are being paid correctly for your housing costs.

If you are in receipt of Housing Benefit, your provisional entitlement will be shown on the front of the rent letter sent to all tenants at the end of February. Housing Benefit notification letters will be sent out with the Council Tax bills on 14 March 2024. Please wait for this notification before making any queries.

We are committed to helping tenants who are facing financial difficulties. If you are struggling, please get in touch with your Income Neighbourhood Officer, we are here to help and will work with you to reach a solution. We work with multiple agencies in order to help including CHAT, Navigate, Citizens Advice, Age UK and National Debt Line. You can email your Income Neighbourhood Officer on htenancy@middevon.gov.uk or call 01884 255255.

We also have a dedicated financial support page on our website Residents' Financial Support - MIDDEVON.GOV.UK where you can find out how to apply for the Discretionary Housing Payment, the Household Support Fund (closes 31^st March 2024), what help with food and energy costs are available and lots more.

We offer a variety of different ways to pay your rent and charges. These include:

• Via your online portal My Mid Devon my.middevon.gov.uk
• Weekly, fortnightly or monthly by direct debit. 
• Over the phone with a Neighbourhood Officer (call 01884 255255)
• Via automated telephone payment 24 hour service (01884 233000)
• At your nearest Post Office
• At any PayZone

Your rent helps pay for the services we provide you, from responsive repairs, planned maintenance to helping and supporting you to manage your tenancy etc. The yearly increase in rent ensures that MDH can continue to deliver and improve services. All of our services have been impacted by the inflation increase but we will continue to increase our investments in repairs, maintenance and improving homes.  We need to ensure that our expenditure does not exceed our income and therefore we budget carefully to ensure that our service remains financially robust and viable.

Every 12 months we provide an annual report which includes details of the spending and performance for that year. Please see our annual reports for more details on our yearly spending. 

We understand the need to deliver value for money whilst at the same time delivering more responsive and more relevant services. For example, we know that many tenants want to live in a clean and tidy area. The costs of grounds maintenance, communal electricity and communal cleaning are all rising but we need to prioritise these areas of work in order to help people to take pride in where they live.

If you have any ideas as to what we could do to deliver greater value for money, we would like to hear from you. Any idea, big or small, can be considered; for example, would you like to see more online meetings with tenants? This would keep our travelling costs down whilst also ensuring that you had an opportunity to talk to us about matters of importance to you. 

We use feedback from tenants to help us to improve our service, we also want to make our money go further and this is why we are looking for small changes which can make a big different. If you have an idea you would like to discuss please contact our Tenant Involvement Team on 01884 255255, email tenantinvolvement@middevon.gov.uk or email the contact form on the right hand side.