Guidance

HB Direct issue 180

Updated 5 December 2017

Editorial

I can’t believe we are now into December and the annual run up to the seasonal holidays with all the build-up and mayhem that seems to come with it. It is always a busy time for us in Housing Delivery Division, as it is in the local authorities (LAs) and I don’t see this year being any different.

The year has flown by so quickly and with it a lot of changes. I was pleased to see concerns about the operational delivery of Universal Credit being addressed through the budget announcements, particularly the commitment on temporary accommodation. Delivering these changes to the timetable described will be a real challenge but we are working closely with the LA consultative bodies and the LA IT suppliers to impact the changes and land them safely. We will keep you updated with progress.

On 30 November 2017 the Department for Work and Pensions published the final estimates for fraud and error in the benefit system for the financial year 2016/17 and I found the Housing Benefit (HB) figures encouraging. Although Overpayments in HB have increased (taking the rate to 6.4% (£1.51 billion) from 6.0% (£1.46 billion) in 2015/16) this is the same rate as seen in the preliminary estimates which indicates an improvement in the latter half of the year. Failure to declare changes to earnings and employment continues to be main cause of overpayments accounting for £627million of total overpayments, however this is a decrease of £31million since last year. I consider that the continued efforts by LAs, utilising the Real Time Information (RTI) files, has made a considerable contribution to this decrease and to the reduction in the amount of error in the HB caseload. We will continue to target our efforts and funding towards this area as we test and then rollout the Verify Earnings and Pensions alerts in the next year.

In this edition you’ll find news of a pilot using RTI for HB Overpayment Recovery, how champions in LAs are assisting with the transition to the Employee Authentication Service replacement service, an important reminder to return the 2017/18 Memorandum of Understanding, a heads up on the next LA Insight Survey, clarification on temporary accommodation and Universal Credit and a request for information on benefit service resilience.

Just to remind you, we do not usually publish HB Direct in January.

I’ll take the opportunity to wish you all a merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Clare Elliott
Head of Housing Delivery Division

Send distribution and newsletter enquiries to housing.correspondenceandpqs@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Real Time Information for HB Overpayment Recovery

We’re aiming to introduce a Real Time Information (RTI) service for tackling all local authorities’ (LAs) stock of Housing Benefit (HB) debt by March 2018.

We recently ran a small pilot (Private Beta) with 6 authorities and the results so far have been very encouraging.

The 6 authorities sent us 4,100 records relating to debts raised in 2013/14. No recovery was taking place on any of these cases as the trail had gone cold.

Of the cases matched, 62% were returned to LAs with up to date employed or self-employed income information; suggesting a voluntary repayment or Direct Earnings Attachment could be made. The highest earner was paid £15,000 the previous month (this is not a typo!), suggesting their £2,000 overpayment would be in their gift to repay.

In addition, all the cases matched (over 90%) provided an up to date address for the debtor and, in many cases, this was new information that the authority had not been able to obtain elsewhere.

We are so grateful for the time and expertise shared by the authorities involved in Private Beta and the wider networks of LA recovery experts we’ve been working with so far.

We are working with the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWPs) Overpayment Recovery lead from the Housing Delivery Division’s (HDDs) Performance Development Team (PDT), who is helping us get the most out of their expert LA network. We’re also working closely with the LA Data Sharing (LADS) Team to make changes to the Data Hub so we can scale up the pilots to meet demand. HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) are the other main partner and we’re testing that the data match job can be re-run and scaled with them too.

Ahead of the changes to the Data Hub, that will enable Public Beta rollout before the March 2018 deadline, we’re aiming to expand the Private Beta pilot to involve more LAs before this Christmas.

We’re also working on a longer term digital service for access to RTI for debt recovery for 2019.

We’ll keep updating you through HB Direct, a planned Working Group, email and Glasscubes. However, it you have any queries in the meantime please write to lgdata.sharingtransformation@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

You are the Champions!

We told you how we’re changing the way you access the Customer Information System (CIS), Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP) and the Tell Us Once Customer Reporting System (CRS) in November’s HB Direct 179. As a reminder, we’re taking this opportunity to get rid of all tracker spreadsheets, offline processes, web cams, smart cards, signature pads and Active X download requirements. And we’re redesigning the administration user interface to meet Government Digital Service usability standards.

On 27 October 2017 we wrote to ask Chief Finance Officers and Revenues & Benefits managers to nominate at least 2 Champions from every authority to embed the Employee Authentication Service (EAS) replacement solution.

By 23 November 2017 we followed this up by asking the newly appointed Champions to run a quick connectivity check and send us postal address details, so we can send out end user devices (“tokens”) to replace Agent smartcards. We had a fantastic response from senior managers and Champions alike and would like to thank you very much for that.

In December we’re introducing a new ‘Splash’ page, which will ask users to enter their user name before going to the usual user name and One Time Password screen when trying to access CIS, VEP or CRS. This means that when your LA is ready to be migrated, instead of being passed through to the usual logon screen, you will be directed to the EAS replacement service.

Between 12 December 2017 and 18 January 2018 (Private Beta phase for this project), we’re aiming to migrate end users for the 40 organisations in the EAS Working Group. For the rest of January and February 2018 we’ll be aiming to rollout end users and administrators for all councils and central government departments that need EAS.

We’ll keep in touch through HB Direct, mass emails, Glasscubes and direct emails to Champions and other key EAS users. But in the meantime if you have any queries please send them to eas.admin@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Important reminder: 2017-2018 Memorandum of Understanding between DWP and LAs

The 2017-2018 Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) required sign off by Friday 1 December 2017. To ensure continued access to DWP and HMRC data each LA is required to fully complete, sign and return the necessary declaration found on pages 30 and 31 of the MoU. The MoU was accompanied by a Code of Connection (CoCo). A completed CoCo is also required if your LA is not Public Services Network (PSN) compliant.

Many thanks to those LAs who have already responded with either their signed MoU or an update on their current position.

Could we please urge those LAs who have not yet returned their declarations to do so as soon as possible.

In the meantime if you have any issues or queries concerning the signing of the MoU, please email hbsdsecurity.team@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

LA Insight Survey: Wave 34 starts soon

The Local Authority Insight Survey (LAIS) is a survey of all 380 LAs and has been running since 1999. Your responses to date have provided valuable evidence to help inform design, delivery and review of crucial public policy, delivery issues and DWP/LA engagement. Essentially, the LA Insight Survey is an opportunity for you to help us see what’s happening ‘on the ground’. And the more responses we receive and, in turn, data we gather helps influence decisions and change!

In recent waves, the LAIS has gathered data on preparation for Universal Credit, DWP communications with LAs, Discretionary Housing Payments and the removal of access to HB for European Economic Area jobseekers.

The next Wave 34 is due to start in January 2018, when our research contractors NatCen will send an email survey to Revenues and Benefits managers. So if you haven’t received your email by the end of January please contact Catherine Flynn on 0113 251 9047 or at catherine.flynn@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

This time, we will be asking for your views on:

• Fraud and Error in HB (including questions around Customer Management Information and VEP)
• the effects of reducing the time HB claimants can spend abroad to four weeks
• changes to your LAs structures and services, in order to deliver Welfare Reform

If you’re a Revenues and Benefits manager and you don’t have all the information needed to answer the questions yourself, we ask you to collate responses for your area from other colleagues or organisations. If you’re not a Revenues and Benefits manager you might be asked to answer some of the questions.

Prior to issuing the latest survey we will be conducting a small pilot in December 2017. If you are invited to take part in the pilot please take the time to complete the questionnaire, so that we can make sure the final version is fit for purpose.

We really do appreciate your help with these surveys and we’d like to use this opportunity to thank everyone who took part in the last Wave 33. We are planning to publish the results of that wave in January 2018. The findings of waves that have been published so far can be found on www.gov.uk

If you have any questions about the survey please email Catherine Flynn on the details given above.

New LA Welfare Steering Group

Just to let you know we have updated our HB pages on www.gov.uk to reflect the recently formed LA Welfare Steering Group. This Group represents a merger between the former DWP LA Association Steering Group and the former Universal Credit LA Steering Group. The DWP LA Welfare Steering Group is responsible for considering and providing a strategic expert view from an LA perspective into all HB, Universal Credit, Universal Support and other DWP welfare related matters in order to support their on-going development, refinement, implementation and delivery; and is the main forum for DWP to consult with LA associations. If you have any queries regarding this article you can contact mont.goldman@dwp.gsi.gov.uk

Clarification: Temporary accommodation and Universal Credit

There are changes to the way temporary accommodation will be handled from April 2018 where the claimant is in receipt of Universal Credit. For all cases where a claimant is placed in temporary accommodation, regardless of the timeframe, this will be managed by LAs through HB. This is not limited to short term temporary accommodation only.

Benefit service resilience

In the spirit of building resilience and delivering their benefit services more effectively and efficiently, many LAs are opting to implement various arrangements such as shared services with other LAs, outsourcing and call-off contracts.

To support the department’s understanding of the current arrangements, HDD’s PDT is asking all LAs to provide relevant information on this topic. To help us with this we would be very grateful if you could respond to the questions below by email to marco.almeida@dwp.gsi.gov.uk, by 12 January 2018. Alternatively, if you would find it easier, you can give Marco a call on 07825 762 654.

• Do you currently have any arrangement/contract in place to provide resilience to your benefit service delivery? If yes, please explain why.
• If yes, please describe the type of arrangement/contract and who this is with.
• Give a brief description of the details of this arrangement/contract.
• What benefits does this arrangement provide?
• Provide any other details on this arrangement/contract, for example, other LAs involved and date the arrangement/contract started and or ended.

Once this information has been received and collated, HDD will look to develop a good practice guide that can be shared with LAs.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.