Guidance

HB Direct issue 178

Updated 5 December 2017

Editorial

So as we wave goodbye to another summer and welcome the autumn, I hope you all had the opportunity to take a nice break. With the autumn comes the conference season and by the time you read this, the Scottish National IRRV conference will have taken place in Crief. I’m sorry to those LAs that attended that I could not this year, but I’m sure Adrian Shooter and colleagues provided informative updates in my absence. I will be making the annual trip to Telford for the National Conference in October and look forward to seeing many of you there.

This edition includes a couple of articles around published statistics and I think the position on speed of processing demonstrates your continued efforts to deliver Housing Benefit (HB) services consistently against the challenges of changing caseloads in terms of size and makeup and of course all whilst Universal Credit Full Service rolls out. The increase in the amount of changes in circumstances processed underlines the importance of continued data matching to effectively support this.

On the subject of sharing data we’ve also included the latest position with the Real Time Information service roll out which continues as planned and a reminder of the revised circular that was issued earlier in the year on Right Benefit Initiative taking account of the automatic uploading of files.

You may all have come into contact with our consultants and monitoring team at one point or other as they are a huge part of our front line support to you. In the article that follows you can read about some of their activities over the last year or so and the large number of areas they have covered in order to understand your issues and help to improve performance.

We can also now confirm the locations for the next series of subsidy workshops. These were a huge success last time around and I know Phil, Michael and team will be looking forward to getting out and about on the road to work with you on what is always a thought provoking and passionately discussed area later in the year.

Not long until Christmas now…

Clare Elliott Head of Housing Delivery Division
Distribution and newsletter enquiries

Working with local authorities to improve performance

The Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWPs) Housing Delivery Division (HDD) works with local authorities (LAs) on all aspects of your HB performance. HDD’s Performance Development Team (PDT) is made up of an expert collective of consultants who cover the geography of England, Scotland and Wales and a smaller Desk Based Engagement (DBE) team who undertake initial telephone contact with authorities. This relatively small team uses the quarterly published Speed of Processing statistics as a starting point for engaging with an authority. Contact is aimed at supportively understanding the reasons for changes in performance.

Additional on-site consultancy support from the PDT consultants is always offered. The DBE team will ask an authority to complete and return a monthly performance reporting template which covers, amongst other things, the age profile of any outstanding work and up to date clearance times. The aim of this is to get the fullest understanding on all aspects of the situation within the LA so that the most effective remedial steps can be identified and agreed upon.

The DBE team had a busy but productive time in 2016/17 contacting LAs about their processing of HB claims and changes of circumstances. They worked with 63 authorities focusing on your speed of processing performance. Out of the 63 authorities 54 improved their speed of processing performance without additional support once any influencing factors had been addressed; for example, knock on impacts from a staffing shortfall. The other 9 benefitted from accepting consultancy support which allowed a more in-depth on site assessment to establish positive next steps. The team continues to keep performance in view for all authorities; paying particular attention to the impact of the rollout of Universal Credit.

Along with monitoring the performance for speed of processing for HB, both the DBE team and PDT consultants worked with authorities on the Fraud and Error Reduction Incentive Scheme (FERIS) performance, debt recovery rates, subsidy and fraud and error indicators. The consultants worked across this range of information and undertook 45 assignments with authorities and used the learning from this to inform good practice.

From May to July 2016 PDT held 21 national good practice workshops in 14 locations attended by 500 LA delegates with very positive feedback from all attendees. Also, following the introduction of FERIS 2 and using published Caseload Management Information, PDT engaged with 87 authorities to understand how FERIS was being used and the correlation between the number of interventions undertaken and fraud and error performance.

If you have any queries about the content of this article or would like to request some consultancy support, please do not hesitate to contact the PDT team on – hdd.pdtconsultants@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

LA subsidy workshops

In the July issue of HB Direct 177 we told you about our plan to hold a series of subsidy workshops in 2017/18 and invited expressions of interest.

The likely locations of these workshops are listed below and have been selected solely on the basis of those expressions of interest. Where there has been insufficient interest to warrant a workshop in a particular part of the country people from that part of the country who wish to attend a workshop will be invited to the nearest one.

Likely locations of workshops for LA staff new to subsidy:

• Birmingham
• Leeds
• London/Greater London
• Manchester
• Salisbury

Likely locations of workshops for LA staff more experienced in subsidy:

• Birmingham
• Cambridge
• Leeds
• London/Greater London
• Manchester
• Salisbury
• Scotland

Locations will be finalised in September 2017. If you want to attend a workshop you should email Michael Mina at – michael.mina@dwp.gsi.gov.uk and confirm the type of workshop you are interested in.

Right Benefit Initiative – revised circular

The Right Benefit Initiative (RBI), which replaced FERIS for 2017/18, commenced on 1 April 2017. A total of 324 LAs opted into the initiative which is designed to maximise the return on investment and will target LA activity on earnings related fraud and error.

Since the initiative’s launch PDT’s DBE team received a number of queries which has now resulted in some amendments to the original circular HB A7/2017 that was issued in March 2017.

The main change is around the subsidy arrangements for Optional Real Time Information (RTI) due to LA IT suppliers now providing a solution for automatically uploading Optional RTI files to the LA IT system. For the purpose of HB subsidy arrangements, the four week easement commences from the point the LA selects a case making it available for HB staff to process. Where an LA does not select a case to process from the Optional RTI file there is no subsidy implication.

The revised circular, including details of all the amendments made, can be found on www.gov.uk

HDD has also recently issued an RTI awareness aid for LAs where you can find more information on Optional RTI. This was developed as a result of LA feedback.

If you have any queries please e-mail – feris.team@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Publication of HB Speed of Processing statistics

We published HB Speed of Processing (SoP) statistics and associated data for the quarter 4 (Q4) period January to March 2017 on Wednesday 26 July 2017. Here’s some key points:

New Claims

• The average time taken to process new HB claims in Q4 of 2016/17 was 21 calendar days, this is one day lower than it was in Q4 of 2015/16.

• There were 288,000 new HB claims. This represents an increase of 11,000 (4.0%) since last quarter and a decrease of 25,000 (8.1%) since Q4 of 2015/16.

Changes of Circumstances

• The average time taken to process changes of circumstances to HB claims for quarter 4 of 2016/17 was 4 calendar days, this is the same as it was in Q4 of 2015/16.

• There were 6.55 million changes of circumstances to HB claims. This is an increase of 4.04 million (160%) since last quarter and an increase of 106,000 (1.6%) cases from Q4 of 2015/16.

To note:

• There was an increase in the number of change of circumstances and decreases in processing time in Q4 each year. The average time taken to process change of circumstances tends to decrease in February and/or March. This may be due to the increase of resources to deal with bulk change of circumstances, and often uprating activity, at the end of the financial year.

• The rollout of Universal Credit Full Service means that new HB claims are no longer accepted in some Universal Credit areas. This may have an impact on the SoP figures at the LA level.

Full details can be found on – www.gov.uk

Publication of HB Caseload Management Information (experimental) Official Statistics

At the same time and for the same Q4 period of January to March 2017 we also published (experimental) Official Statistics for the estimated value of reductions to weekly HB entitlement achieved at LA level, compared to the expected level.

Key points:

• The percentage of the expected reductions that was achieved for Q4 2016/17 is the same as the level for Q4 in 2015/16 at 74%. This is an increase from the previous quarter, which was at 72%.

• The total value of reductions to weekly HB entitlement in Q4 of 2016/17 was £37 million, compared with £39 million for the previous quarter (Q3 of 2016/17) and with £38 million for the same quarter a year ago (Q4 2015/16).

• The total value of expected reductions to weekly HB entitlement in Q4 of 2016/17 was £50 million, compared with £54 million for the previous quarter (Q3 of 2016/17) and with £52 million for the same quarter a year ago (Q4 2015/16).

Full details can be found on – www.gov.uk

Update: RTI rollout

Since our last update in July 2017, the RTI service has now been rolled out to an additional 112 sites across the East Midlands, Wales, South West and Scotland.

Prior to each go-live date, action was taken by LAs to authenticate users to enable access to the RTI service; with support from the Wider Use of RTI Project Implementation Managers in the form of conference calls and written guidance.

To date there have been 9840 nominations for additional users and 9042 have already been authorised.

The next 83 sites to roll out have been contacted by their Project Implementation Managers in readiness for their go-live date of 18 September 2017. Authentication activity has taken place and conference calls have been booked and are taking place over the next few weeks.

Following implementation of the RTI service the project will be contacting LA users to ask for their feedback. We would really appreciate your participation, as this will help us inform future implementation approaches. We are also looking for opportunities to improve the RTI service by identifying any outstanding issues and good practices.

If you have any questions regarding the content of this article you can email –
rtiprojects.portfolioqueries@dwp.gsi.gov.uk