Add protected Housing Benefit family premiums with explicit history input
Maintainers usually reply within 1 day
Assessment
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Newbie friendliness
- 8/100
Research direction
The work touches policyengine_uk/variables/gov/dwp/housing_benefit/housing_benefit_applicable_amount.py and a new premiums/family package of YAML and Python files, but the issue is a dense legal-design plan with pre-assessed categories and jurisdiction-specific closure dates. Pull request #2223 is already open against it, so the work is claimed. Done would mean the approved plan's files exist with test cases, which requires the maintainers' design context.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
Summary
Approved plan C3 adds the protected Housing Benefit family premium, with ordinary and historical lone-parent amounts, jurisdiction-specific new-claim closure dates, one pre-assessed category and one derived formula. Eight files and one categorical input; no claim-history input matrix. Benefit and pension rates 2025 to 2026 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, capital, non-dependant deductions and earnings disregards); Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, non-dependant deductions and disregards; cross-checked against the enacted 2026 Order); Housing Benefit family premium amounts (Paragraph 3: ordinary and historically protected lone-parent rates and conditions); Family premium closure and transitional protection (Regulations 1, 2 and 4: closure 1 May 2016 and saved existing families); NI family-premium abolition and transition (Regulations 1, 3 and 5; 5 September 2016 closure, 4 September protected awards)
Audited model surface
- Audited release:
policyengine-uk 2.106.1 - Audit unit:
variable:housing_benefit_applicable_amount - Last model modification: 2024-07-15
- Explicitly reviewed units:
variable:housing_benefit_applicable_amount— last model modification: 2024-07-15
- Audit date: 2026-10-09
- Periods reviewed: 2015 to 2026 rate history; GB 1 May 2016 and NI 5 September 2016 closure
- Jurisdictions: Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Findings and implementation parts
1. The applicable amount omits the family premium for protected awards and the distinct historical lone-parent amount.
Sources: Benefit and pension rates 2025 to 2026 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, capital, non-dependant deductions and earnings disregards); Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, non-dependant deductions and disregards; cross-checked against the enacted 2026 Order); Housing Benefit family premium amounts (Paragraph 3: ordinary and historically protected lone-parent rates and conditions); Family premium closure and transitional protection (Regulations 1, 2 and 4: closure 1 May 2016 and saved existing families); NI family-premium abolition and transition (Regulations 1, 3 and 5; 5 September 2016 closure, 4 September protected awards)
- Add premiums/family/{amount,lone_parent_protected_amount,new_claim_end}.yaml, housing_benefit_family_premium_category.py and housing_benefit_family_premium.py. Integrate once in applicable amount, add focused YAML cases and changelog. Category supplies legally assessed continuous protection, not an inference from present lone-parent status; at least one legally included child is required. Ordinary pre-closure years can use existing family facts. Benefit and pension rates 2025 to 2026 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, capital, non-dependant deductions and earnings disregards); Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, non-dependant deductions and disregards; cross-checked against the enacted 2026 Order); Housing Benefit family premium amounts (Paragraph 3: ordinary and historically protected lone-parent rates and conditions); Family premium closure and transitional protection (Regulations 1, 2 and 4: closure 1 May 2016 and saved existing families); NI family-premium abolition and transition (Regulations 1, 3 and 5; 5 September 2016 closure, 4 September protected awards)
- Add or update
referenceatpolicyengine_uk/variables/gov/dwp/housing_benefit/housing_benefit_applicable_amount.py→reference and protected family premium additionusing Benefit and pension rates 2025 to 2026 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, capital, non-dependant deductions and earnings disregards); Benefit and pension rates 2026 to 2027 (Housing Benefit: personal allowances, non-dependant deductions and disregards; cross-checked against the enacted 2026 Order); Housing Benefit family premium amounts (Paragraph 3: ordinary and historically protected lone-parent rates and conditions); Family premium closure and transitional protection (Regulations 1, 2 and 4: closure 1 May 2016 and saved existing families); NI family-premium abolition and transition (Regulations 1, 3 and 5; 5 September 2016 closure, 4 September protected awards).
- Add or update
Uncertainties and exclusions
No verified dataset mapping for continuous award protection. From each jurisdiction's closure year, absent/NONE input omits protected premiums and may understate awards. The category must reflect all continuity and loss-of-protection conditions; the model does not reconstruct them. Annual input does not recover changes within the year. New-claim end dates are legal metadata, not a future freshness guarantee.
- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 51
- Forks
- 34
- Avg merge
- 2d 11h
- Merged PRs (30d)
- 169
Getting set up
- No Dockerfile or Docker Compose file
- Has a pull request template
- Read the contributing guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
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