How to appeal a benefit decision

When we make a decision, we send you a letter that tells you how your Council Tax Reduction or Housing Benefit was worked out. The letter will also tell you the start and end dates of your claim.

If you do not understand our decision or want to know more, please contact us as soon as possible to ask for more details.

If you are the person who claimed Council Tax Reduction and/ or Housing Benefit (or their appointee) and think a decision we have made about your benefit is wrong you can:

• ask us for an explanation of our decision and/or a written statement of the reasons for the decision
• tell us you disagree with the decision, and why, and ask us to look at it again
• appeal against the decision.

If you are unhappy with a Housing Benefit decision, you must ask us to look at the decision within 1 month of the date of the letter we send you. If you have a special reason for a late request you can ask us after 1 month.  Any appeal will only be treated as made on the day we receive your letter/completed appeal form so please make sure that it reaches us within 1 calendar month of the date of our letter. 

How to appeal

If you decide to make an appeal, the law requires that we have a document that you have signed telling us what you want to do. You can either complete an appeal form or write us a letter.

All forms are available in Welsh - click on 'Cymraeg' in the top right corner of your screen.

Council Tax Reduction appeal form (PDF, 45 KB)

Housing Benefit appeal form (PDF, 45 KB)

Remember to sign the letter or appeal form and then send it to the Benefits Section Appeal Team, Civic Centre, Oystermouth Road, Swansea SA1 3SN or scan the letter and email benefits@swansea.gov.uk. We may need to contact you for more information or evidence about what you tell us.

How to appeal if you are a landlord who receives Housing Benefit

There are special rules if you are the landlord of a property as you can only ask the council to re-examine or appeal against certain decisions: 

• a decision about whether Housing Benefit is to be paid directly to you
• the amount and period of an overpayment we have decided to recover from you
• a decision about whether to recover an overpayment of Housing Benefit from you

When you contact us

Whenever you write to us about a decision, a senior benefits officer will look at your claim again to make sure we have not made a mistake.

If the senior officer decides the original decision was not correct, your claim will be amended and we will send you a new notification letter explaining how the new amount of benefit was calculated. You would then have the right to appeal against this new decision.

With regards to Council Tax Reduction - if you do not receive a reply from us within two months then you may appeal directly to the Valuation Tribunal for Wales (opens new window). Your appeal to them must not be made later than four months from the date you wrote to us.