Housing benefit for mobile homes
This content applies to England only.
Housing laws vary between England and Scotland. Get advice relating to Scotland
If you have a low income or receive welfare benefits, you may be entitled to housing benefit to help pay rent or pitch fees for your mobile home.
Housing benefit if you rent a mobile home
You may get housing benefit to help with the cost of the rent and site fees you pay on a mobile home. This includes caravans and mobile homes occupied by people with a travelling cultural tradition – Gypsies, Travellers, travelling show people, people who are no longer travelling, and people living on permanent mobile home sites.
You may get housing benefit to help with the cost of the rent you pay on a mobile home. You can make a claim in the usual way and your local council will calculate how much housing benefit you are entitled to.
Housing benefit may not meet the full cost of your rent. In most cases, the rent officer at the council will decide the ‘maximum rent’ payable for mobile homes by looking at rents for similar properties in the area. Traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ homes should be considered as well as mobile homes. This doesn’t apply to the rent paid by Gypsies and Travellers on council owned sites or to mobile homes and caravans belonging to the council – the actual rent paid counts instead unless it is unreasonably or exceptionally high.
If you get some housing benefit, but it doesn’t cover all of the rent and there is a shortfall so that you are having difficulty paying the rest of the rent yourself, you may be able to get a discretionary housing payment to help make up the difference.
Housing benefit if you own a mobile home
You can get housing benefit towards your pitch fees/site fees even if you own your mobile home or caravan (but not if they are paid under a long lease).
You can’t get housing benefit to cover any hire purchase fees you may have for the purchase of your home, but may get help with these and similar costs through income support, income-related jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) or income-related employment and support allowance (ESA) instead, if you claim any of these benefits.
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