Can council award housing benefit without your knowledge

Other

We have a problem with a nightmare tenant that has thankfully left the property. However this tenant is now taking us to court to say they dont owe us rent arrears (long story)

What I would like to know is we have an insurance policy that covers professionals only. Can the council and the tenant claim and award housing benefit without informing the landlord. It breaches the tenancy agreement whereby it directly effects the insurance of the property. The tenant has broken the terms of tenancy on a number of levels, but the arguement i have is with the LHA Cardiff County Council, in that they have awarded the tenant housing benefit without informing us. Firstly he kept the money and still continued to live there rent free. When we were informed by his parents with phoned the LHA straight away and they stopped their payments. We explained we DID NOT want to recieve payments direct as we are not insured for housing benefit yet they still paid us anyway (we didnt supply the bank details either).

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks