Guidance

LA Welfare Direct lite 8/20

Updated 11 December 2020

Contact

If you have queries about the:

• technical content of this bulletin, contact details are given at the end of each article

• general content and distribution of this bulletin, contact: housing.correspondenceandpqs@dwp.gov.uk

Who should read

All Housing Benefit staff.

Action

For information.

New Severe Disability Premium confirmation template

1. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has been experiencing issues obtaining confirmation from a number of local authorities (LAs) when a new claim is made to income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), income-based Jobseekers Allowance (JSA IB) and Income Support and the claimant states they were in receipt of the Severe Disability Premium (SDP) as part of the Housing Benefit (HB) only award. An article was included in LAWD12/2019 about sharing this information with DWP.

2. The DWP legacy team check for an HB interest via Searchlight. They then need to confirm with the LA that SDP made up part of the HB award as this information is not available to them via any other routes. Unfortunately, DWP legacy colleagues have reported considerable delays in receiving this information. In some cases, this means the DWP legacy team has been unable to progress the ESA claim, with some claimants signposted to Universal Credit (UC) causing significant delay.

3. To explain, if confirmation is not received, then the claimant has to be signposted to UC to make a claim. Once a claim has been made to UC and there is an HB interest an HB Stop notice is then issued to the LA and the MGP1LA form is returned to UC to ensure the claimant remains on legacy benefits as they are in receipt of SDP.

4. DWP fully appreciate LAs have limited resources available and some existing communication methods are currently unavailable, therefore, a new process is being put in place to support our DWP legacy operational colleagues.

5. As from 31 August 2020, a new SDP confirmation template (SDP confirmation of payment in HB template attached as a separate Appendix) is being introduced. It will be sent to LAs from the ESA team to the same email address which DWP use for SDP reinstatement templates.

6. This should remove the need for phone calls to LAs from the DWP legacy team and requests made to the claimant to provide this information direct.

Further DWP led Engagement Events for LAs

7. In Autumn 2019 the Local Authority Partnership, Engagement and Delivery (LA-PED) division held a series of engagement events with LAs and DWP Partnership Managers.

8. The events were used to communicate what was happening in relation to HB and the UC Programme and feedback and analysis from the events was issued to all LAs in early March 2020.

9. Based on this feedback LA-PED had intended to follow the same approach and format for the 2020 events but the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that we need to revisit this approach and deliver LA-PED key messages virtually to LAs. Therefore, we will now be delivering a rolling programme of ‘bite size’ one to two hour sessions. These will begin in late September 2020 and will be delivered by audio conference or Skype.

10. A timetable of the 2020 sessions along with joining instructions will be issued to LAs via their single inbox in early September 2020. DWP Partnership managers will also be invited to join any sessions they have an interest in.

11. The topics that will be covered in the 2020 sessions include:

• the wider remit of LA-PED following our change of divisional name in April 2020 as advised in LAWD4/2020

• an overview of the recovery plan we have in place to support LAs in getting HB services back up and running post coronavirus (COVID-19)

• feedback from the 2019 Cost Refresh exercise

• how DWP is able to support new LAs forming as a result of Local Government Structural Reforms

12. These monthly engagement sessions will continue throughout 2021, so if you have any suggestions for future topics please email us at uclocalauthority.liaisonteam@dwp.gov.uk