The ‘Housing Benefit Occupancy Analysis Toolkit (HousBOAT)’ is a programmed spreadsheet for calculating whether or not households will be affected by the Housing Benefit deductions on grounds of under-occupation (commonly called ‘the Bedroom Tax’), what the financial impact will be and for how long.

Using household profile, rents and property data from your housing management system HousBOAT performs a complete analysis of all households in the context of the bedroom tax.

Practical benefits include;

•    Improved communications with customers – you are able to tell them exactly how they will be affected, and for how long. Data can easily be used for personalised letters and Mail-merges.
• The ability to adjust the calculation by adding, removing or updating household members if your customer profile is inaccurate.
• Easily identify erroneous or missing data that you need to correct in order to calculate the bedroom tax implications.
• Quantify the mismatch between current and ideal occupancy levels for your housing stock as a whole, and determine what this might mean for your lettings policies.
• Quantify the potential financial risk to your organisation for current and future years.
• Repeat the analysis over time, and test the effectiveness of your response to the risks posed.