Agenda item

The Director of Finance submits a report updating on the Housing Benefit Subsidy arrangements for the authority.

Members will be asked to note the contents and comment on the findings highlighted in the report.

The Director of Finance submitted a report updating on the Housing Benefit Subsidy arrangements for the authority.

Caroline Jackson, Head of Revenues and Customer Support presented the report which included an update on the current audit regime, the subsidy qualification loss and the measures in place to minimise the loss, an update on the next steps to continue the improvement journey and how the service promoted customers reporting a change in circumstances.

Members discussed the report during which the following comments were made:

·         Clawback was recovered from people where possible usually as a deduction out of their housing benefit. With universal credit although an application could be made to DWP to deduct, it fell very low down on the list of priority debtors and was therefore not likely to be recovered.

·         There was an option for claimants to phone through and notify changes although that was not to a dedicated number, however the call flow had tiers and within that “change in circumstances” calls were classified as tier 2 calls which were prioritised with an average call waiting time of 4 minutes.

·         The online reporting mechanism was a stand alone e-form, this was not yet integrated into back office although there were plans to move towards that next year. It was intended that the form would be easy to find and complete. Officers as well as members of the public would test accessibility to the form using the council’s website.

·         There were challenges on the customer call centre due to the high volumes of calls coming through. This was being managed with an action plan in place (reviewed last August) and training for everyone who worked in the call centre.

·         In the 8 weeks since the introduction of Universal Credit the team had received 4,000 online notifications from DWP of which only 15% had an impact on a claim which meant that 85% had to be checked which had no impact. The team had to look at all of the notifications to ascertain if there was an impact on a claim.

·         It was noted that 14 local authorities had been invited to a DWP and stakeholder meeting to express concerns about strategic management of Universal Credit and the impact on local authorities. The committee shared the concerns of officers about the high levels of notifications and strategic management of Universal Credit by DWP and asked for feedback from the stakeholder meeting.

Members noted difficulties in retention of staff/recruitment and were advised that the service area was currently running with 15 vacancies. A new 3-year contract was to start shortly with Civica - a company that would help to deal with a third of the change of circumstance cases. The council would continue to manage more complex cases whilst they managed the lesser ones coming through. With the contract in place and efficiencies being brought in, the service was confident the workload will be manageable and were therefore not looking to fill vacancies at this point.

In terms of staff retention, the extension of the full roll out of Universal Credit to 2022 had not helped, the service was maintaining training, IT procedures had been refreshed and there were morale boosters  such as a dress down day every month plus activities that staff were encouraged to participate in so that the workplace was somewhere they wanted to be.

Members expressed concerns regarding the delays encountered with the statutory audit by KPMG and noted the difficulties for officers in fulfilling statutory obligations as KPMG hadn’t done work in a timely manner.

Members were informed there had also been a delay to the external audit sign off of the Council’s accounts by the end of July despite assurances given at the last meeting and it was suggested that corporate issues within KPMG were impacting. Members noted that the Director of Finance had written to KPMG and the Chair asked that KPMG’s response to that letter be shared and to be kept informed of the situation.

Members agreed that a letter from the Chair expressing the concerns of the committee should be written to KPMG.

The Chair asked for the committee to be updated on progress regarding the Housing Benefit Subsidy arrangements to a future meeting.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the contents of the report be noted,

2.    That the Chair write to KPMG to express the concerns of the committee over delays and impact on the local authority audit process,

3.    That an update be brought to a future meeting.