LHA Rent Calculator (Local Housing Allowance)

Enter the postcode above and the tool returns the rate for every size, from a shared room to four bedrooms. Local Housing Allowance is set per Broad Rental Market Area rather than per council or per street, so neighbouring postcodes can sit in different areas and carry different rates. The figures here come from the Valuation Office Agency's published table.

No. LHA caps what the state will pay towards a private tenant's rent through Universal Credit or Housing Benefit. You can charge whatever the market bears. What LHA tells you is how much of your rent a benefit-reliant tenant could cover from their housing element, and therefore how big a top-up they would need to find from other income each month.

By the number of bedrooms the household is entitled to, not the number the property has, capped at the four bedroom rate because there is no larger category. The shared accommodation rate is a tenant circumstance rather than a property one: it generally applies to single people under 35 without children, so a one bedroom flat let to a 28 year old single tenant is usually assessed at the shared rate, not the one bedroom rate.

Rates have repeatedly been held at earlier levels rather than tracking the market. Because LHA is re-based by the government rather than by an automatic index, a freeze widens the gap between the ceiling and actual market rents in fast-moving areas, which is exactly where the tenant top-up grows. Check the period shown beside the result so you know which year's table you are reading.

The Valuation Office Agency's Local Housing Allowance rates publication, under the Open Government Licence, joined to postcode outward codes using the VOA's own Broad Rental Market Area boundaries. Rates are re-based each April. If a postcode returns nothing it means the outward code is not in the published boundary set, not that the rate is zero.