Agenda item

Report of the Director of Finance

This report provides an update on the revenues and benefits service and the current performance of the benefits service.

The Scrutiny Committee received a report of the Shared Director of Finance including the latest update on the performance of the benefits service.  The Shared Director of Finance advised that the report had originally been provided to Budget Panel in October, but had been updated for this meeting.

In response to a question about staff morale, the Portfolio Holder for Shared Services, Councillor Watkin, advised that the previous day he had visited the team.  He had felt there was a sense of building the team and there had been positive responses from those present.

Councillor Bell stated he had attended the Shared Services Joint Committee on 18 November where the Interim Head of Service had described the service as “fragile”.

The Interim Head of Revenues and Benefits again acknowledged that the service did not have full resilience.  The aim was for staff to be able to do the complete job and not just sections of it.  Once staff were able to carry out the full role they would be able to cover for members of the team who were away from the office.  There was training to be carried out.  Communication between teams was improving.  They discussed problems together.  He advised that his intention was to put the building blocks in place to make the service sustainable. 

Following further comments from Councillor Bell, the Interim Head of Revenues and Benefits explained that using off-site contractors was commonly used by local authorities during difficult periods.  It enabled staff to do their day to day work and Managers were able to think ahead and consider how to use their teams to their full advantage. 

The Interim Head of Revenues and Benefits stated that he was unable to comment on the situation prior to starting in the service in October.  He explained about local authority errors.  He said that local authority errors were an inevitable consequence from a complex system, but the service’s error rate had been too high.  The error rate had gone down within the last two weeks.

It was noted that in October the service had reached the target of 15 days for processing change in circumstance and had also achieved the target rate for processing new claims.

Councillor Khan referred to the overpayments, which were still outstanding from the previous three years. 

The Shared Director of Finance explained that all overpayments were passed to the Income Team and were classed as debtors to the Council.  The overpayment could either be recovered through ongoing benefit payments or other recovery methods, which included attachment of earnings.  Unless the overpayment was written off, it was expected the debt would be recovered over time.

Councillor Khan asked whether it was possible to identify the number of individuals who were required to repay benefit overpayments due to local authority error.  He also enquired whether it was possible to discover the impact on people who had been overpaid benefits.

The Shared Director of Finance explained that the Council did not monitor overpayments in that way and did not identify the differing types when monitoring the recovery of overpayments.  The overpayment classification was only relevant when the subsidy claim was submitted.  Once the recovery process had started the type of error was no longer relevant.  If someone had difficulty repaying the overpayment, or any other payment that was due to the Council, they needed to contact the Council to make a payment arrangement.  Officers should also be able to direct people to external organisations for financial advice.

The Portfolio Holder commented that an overpayment occurred as soon as a change in a person’s benefit or income happened.  It would be classed as a local authority error because of timing rather than what would be understood as an error.

The Interim Head of Revenues and Benefits further explained the benefits’ procedure.  It was often the case that the error had not arisen due to the service making mistakes.  The matter of classification was a difficult subject as the overpayments could be due to a number of reasons, including fraud, local authority error or claimant error.  The Council only recognised the overpayment as a debt, and the recovery process was not concerned with how it had arisen.

Councillor Aron congratulated the service for the improvements.  The performance data was better than earlier in the year.  She asked the Shared Director of Finance and Interim Head of Revenues and Benefits to inform the staff that the Councillors appreciated their work.

Councillor Bell acknowledged that the staff should be paid tribute for their work.  He asked if officers could explain why Watford had the highest local authority error in the county.

The Shared Director of Finance advised that this had been explained in a number of reports to Councillors.  The previously reported issues with the ATLAS work would have impacted on the level of errors.

The Chair thanked the officers for the information and responding to Members’ questions.  It was agreed that an update would be presented to the Scrutiny Committee in March.

Councillor Khan suggested that an article should be produced for the Members’ Bulletin highlighting the support and advice available to the public if they had financial difficulties. 

RESOLVED –

1.      that the report be noted.

2.      that a further update be presented to Overview and Scrutiny Committee in March 2014.

3.      that an article should be produced for the Members’ Bulletin highlighting the support and advice available to the public if they had financial difficulties.