Full Council Meetings to Move?

I'm hearing rumours that full council meetings at the Council House are soon to end and will move round the corner to a venue on Long Row.

The new venue, a former bank now owned by the Mellors Group, will apparently allow a number of new synergies.

I'm told the feeling is that, as James Mellors already spends so much time feeding City Councillors, they might as well move into a spare room in his gaff.

A further development is that the current Housing Benefit and Council Tax Support application system will be integrated with the slot machines downstairs. Head of Service Lisa Black explains;

"Everyone knows we couldn't run a bath so we decided to introduce an element of chance into the claims process to get us off the hook. The idea is that you deposit your claim form into one of the slot machines and the spinning wheels all have a selection of instructions on them, such as 'provide proof of benefit', 'give us a sample of your landlord/lady's underwear' or whatever. We've still got to make them up. Just like we make everything up.

"If you get the same three instructions come up congratulations! You are one of the lucky people whose claims will be administered before you are evicted for rent arrears*."

Asked what will happen to the Council House itself, spokesdroid Frila Pool said;

"Oh we'll flog it to Intu. It's a shopping centre after all. They'll wrap it in fibreglass and paint it pink."

*In actual fact your claim probably won't be processed before you're evicted, you're poor so nobody at the City Council gives a shit what happens to you.

Housing Benefit Fraud

I've taken the piss out of NCC's anti-benefit fraud measures before but with new figures available it's time to have another go.

Again, the report before the Audit Committee is the source of our interest here. On page 8 we are told that, during 2012/3, NCC detected 178 Housing/Council Tax benefit fraud, worth a total of £586,490. Even without any help from a responsible adult, I have worked out that is an average of £3295 per case.

The Midlands and East of England average is 332 cases, totaling £698,296, an average of £2103 per case.

I don't think we can make too much of the lower than average number of cases, that average is clearly elevated by one LA (Birmingham?) with 3500 or so cases. But NCC's higher value per case could be said to imply that frauds are not caught as early, which is not a good thing in fraud detection circles. There are probably other potential explanations as well.

But hello, what have we here? (word document) It's a Freedom of Info request asking about how much NCC spends on anti benefit fraud activities. It says that, in 2012/3 NCC spent £586,000 on such work, the money going on

...cost of the fraud staff in wages and then a percentage of all other costs based on fraud staff as a percentage of total benefits staff. Other costs include such things as IT, accommodation, central charges etc.

That's pretty clear, the question was unambiguous and the explanation of the costs makes it plain that the cost of the activity hasn't been confused with, say the amount of fraud detected...

Because the two figures are rather similar aren't they? It seems an extraordinary coincidence that, for a spend of £560,000 anti-fraud activity you detect fraud worth a total of £560,490.

Unless of course you've been a bit lazy and, rather than come up with a system to estimate the worth of each fraud case you catch and collating the results annually, you simply record as the 'cost' of detected fraud as how much how much was spent on the wages, IT and paperclips of your crack fraud detecting team. And in the FoI response linked, they DID say they didn't have an estimate of the value of fraud committed.

If it wasn't for the fact that NCC's housing benefit service has a long track record of pisspoor management information systems (largely due to having pisspoor management) I would find this explanation impossible to believe.

The alternative of course is that NCC's benefits fraud team saves the council the grand total of less than £500/year. Before anybody says that any saving is worthwhile you must remember that many people are investigated for fraud and found to have done nothing wrong. It is always a stressful, sometimes terrifying experience. I sincerely hope it is the 'crap management information' explanation that turns out to be correct because a saving of £490 is not worth a single person being wrongly accused and investigated.

Local Government Ombudsman Screws Up

Arguably not strictly down to NCC this but it is in connection with an NCC benefits decision so I think it is of interest.

Ask anybody who's had contact with them and they will tell you that the Local Government Ombudsman is a bag of shit. Even within the preposterously restricted boundaries they manage to set themselves for looking into complaints against councils they have a reputation for at best toothlessness and at worst outright bias. A true 'Watchpoodle' if you will.

It also turns out they are capable of being legally incompetent. On one of my random browsing sessions I found this decision on some complaints about Housing Benefit and DHP issues.

As far as the restricted boundaries I mention above are concerned, this paragraph on the DHP aspect sums it up nicely -

"The decision was based on the merits of the case. I am satisfied the Council carried out the correct process in deciding not to award a second DHP. It is not my role to comment on the merits of the decision itself."

Essentially, the Ombudsman is saying that as long as the procedure was followed, the fact that you may have been refused a DHP because of your penchant for wearing loud shirts in built up areas is none of their business. Yeah, you try explaining that too an ordinary Joe/Josie.

However more concerning is how the Ombudsman dealt with a complaint that NCC had wrongly suspended his benefit on two occasions. It kind of relates to those boundaries again -

"I did not investigate the complaint. Mr B complained that Mr B’s housing benefit was suspended on two occasions. He had the right to appeal to the social entitlement appeal tribunal over these decisions. I consider it would have been reasonable for him to exercise that right."

Oh dear. Can I refer m'learned friend to para 5 of the schedule to the Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit (Decisions and Appeals) Regs

"5. No appeal shall lie against a decision under Part III of these Regulations of a relevant authority relating to–

(a) suspension of a payment of benefit or of a reduction;

..."

So, the Ombudsman refused to investigate an aspect of a complaint on the grounds that the complainant had a course of redress that he didn't, in fact, have at his disposal at all. That is a fundamental legal error and is totally unacceptable.

One wonders if this position was argued by NCC or whether the Ombudsman came up with it her/himself. If the former then NCC's HB staff need to have a word with themselves too (no change there) but either way, the Ombudsman's treatment of this complaint is way below standard.

Bedroom Tax - When Is a Two-Bedroom Flat not a Two-Bedroom Flat?

I had really mixed feelings over writing this post. As you may have noticed, this blog is normally a little bit critical of Nottingham City Council, both from moral and/or legal viewpoints. So what should I do when NCC does something which you applaud morally but have serious misgivings about legally? Keep schtum and hope nobody notices? Or be Mr Consistent and call it out anyway? I've gone for the latter because there seems to be a significant amount of legal woo building up on the whole 'Bedroom Tax' subject and most importantly because the consequences of what is essentially wishful thinking will probably fall on the heads of tenants.

I'm talking of course about of NCC's decision to redefine all high rise flats it owns as 1 bedroom flats regardless of how many bedrooms they have. This has now hit the mainstream media and I quietly mentioned it in an addendum to my earlier post on the bedroom tax. The decision also includes 'reviewing' a small number of other properties where one of the alleged bedrooms is smaller than 50 sq ft. I'm happier (legally) with this bit so I'll come back to it later.

So, the decision to redefine the high rise properties then. It initially looked so simple, politicians and expert commentators were saying that the number of bedrooms you have is decided by your landlord. Landlords actually have no interest in 20% of their tenants being suddenly unable to pay their rent so what would you do?

The problem is that politicians saying all this sounded to me very much like the sort of pronouncements of gay abandon popular with people who actually have no idea how the law works. You think this doesn't happen? Witness Cameron bullshitting on a virtually daily basis about people who are exempt when the political situation makes it advantageous to do so. And so it is the case about it all being up to landlords.

The fundamental problem is that the new law does not define what a bedroom is and furthermore, does not actually say who decides. If the politicians were right and it really was down to the landlord the law would say that.

Where does that leave us? Well, the actual decision as to how much benefit you get, which implicitly includes all 'bedroom tax' questions including how many bedrooms you have, is made by the decision makers of the benefit authorities i.e. the council's housing benefits officers. For now at least (as usual, more in a bit on this). It's a matter of simple fact i.e. what the situation actually is rather than what someone would like it to be. They have to decide what a 'bedroom' is using the normal English use of the word which is the default position when a term is not specifically defined in the law.

On the face of it that doesn't sound so bad. After all, NCC Housing Benefits officers are hardly likely to go against NCC/NCH decisions are they? Not when it will effectively mean NCC losing out. Well no, they probably won't but the thing is, from October the new Universal Credit benefit scheme is coming in and that, including the rent element, will be decided by JobCentre Plus. They might not be so keen to look the other way. I'm afraid it will be a brave UC claimant saying he only has one bedroom on his claim form when he lives in a 2 bed flat because there's a real chance that will be seen as misrepresentation, a criminal offence.

What's more, let's say you appeal to a Tribunal over an aspect of your HB claim unrelated to the bedroom tax. It's quite open to the Tribunal to not just look at the bit you've appealed against but the claim in it's entirety. You might win your specific point but be worse off because the Tribunal also decides that the bedroom tax should be applied. I've represented hundreds of people before benefits appeal Tribunals in my time, one taking the initiative in this way is entirely feasible, believe me.

That's not the end of it. NCC's auditors will probably look at it at some point. I really don't see how an auditor could sign off what is essentially a scam. I actually think it's possible that charges of conspiracy to defraud could be on the table. There is a small possibility that claimants who went along with it could find themselves charged with this too. This is serious heavy shit for anyone concerned.

Cllr Liversidge's portfolio holder decision notice says that advice has been obtained from a law firm called Trowers and Hamlin. They are supposedly the leading law firm in social rented housing. Well, that's what Wikipedia says anyway so make of that what you will. I have to say that, if they have really provided such advice I humbly and respectively disagree with their conclusions. Not only did I used to be shit-hot at Housing Benefit appeals I've also seen a legal opinion by Jonathon Mitchell QC provided to a Scottish advice agency and I reckon he is pretty much saying the same as I'm saying above, apart from my suggestion of possible conspiracy offences which he hasn't touched on. Even if I'm wrong on that specific point (quite possible I'm no criminal expert) the situation we're left in is not a good one.

I said I'd also look at the situation where small bedrooms are to be disregarded. I think NCC are on much stronger ground here because, although the Housing Benefit regs don't stipulate what counts as a bedroom, the overcrowding rules in the 1985 Housing Act do say that a room smaller than 50 sq ft cannot count as a bedroom even for half a person (less grisly than it sounds, just refers to a child aged between 1 and 10). It's therefore plausible to argue that, when counting up the number of bedrooms those of such a small size should be disregarded. It's a perfectly rational way of deciding such matters and I'd be very surprised if a Tribunal or court interfered with it.

However, there's always a 'but'. Such a principle should in theory apply as much to rented properties in the private sector. As I pointed out before, they have their own version of a bedroom tax baked in to their version of housing benefit. I wonder if NCC has been looking at their claims in this way? If you were a private rented tenant who has had their benefit reduced because of a tiny box room you'd be entitled to be pretty pissed off having seen how NCC proposes to treat council tenants. In fact, under the new regime the same would apply to a Housing Association tenant, NCC cannot redefine other landlords' properties but Housing Benefit decision makers still have to make decisions on a consistent basis.

To be honest, I'm extremely surprised that a private sector tenant has not made a challenge on this basis before, there must be people out there affected in this way. If such a person does launch an appeal and it fails, that would put this aspect of NCC's 'review' under severe threat.

So, I'm sorry people, after considerable thought and research in an area that I do still claim expertise in, I pronounce this a dog's dinner of epic proportions. I really cannot see it holding for long and, even if it does, it is far from equitable to all housing sectors. I'll be watching closely what happens.

Bedroom Tax - Some Thoughts

I went to Nottingham's 'Bedroom Tax' demo last week. Saw the odd NCC councillor and apparently at least one MP popped in too.

You might also be aware that NCC has launched it's own petition against it too and, despite the fact that they deserve a long list of "Where were you when...?" questions, I would urge you to sign it.

It's not hard to see NCC's self interest in challenging the bedroom tax. It's implication will result in a rocketing level of arrears for council housing, the financing of which they are responsible for. In addition, the resultant homelessness and mass of downsizing applications will be a nightmare for them to deal with. We'll see how sympathetic they really are when those evicted for rent arrears rock up at the homelessness office and get told that they're intentionally homeless.

So, to those of us who have actually taken a genuine interest in social welfare provision it's no surprise to see them jump on this particular bandwagon when they haven't given a shit about poor people before. But their voice against the bedroom tax will help the campaign, hence my encouragement for you to sign the petition. Just please make sure you sign all the others too.

But, the fact that there has always been a 'bedroom tax' baked into the housing benefit scheme for private tenants, which has been constantly chipped away at by successive Tory AND Labour governments with nary a campaign, nevermind a squeak from NCC before* raises the question as to what is different. After all, ToryDems are using this former advantage for social housing tenants as a justification for bringing the bedroom tax in. This seems to be a significant gap in the campaign to me.

As far as I can see there are two main reasons why applying a bedroom tax to social tenants is worse than applying to private tenants;

1) You have to apply for social housing, satisfy eligibility criteria, usually spend time on a waiting list before being allocated a property. You rarely get very much choice in where you go. As such, you have no control over how many bedrooms you have so introducing a charege for having a 'spare' seems more unjust.

Of course, the flaw in this argument is that, with the total lack of available social housing,along with this country's peculiar obsession with owner-occupation means that those with neither of those options available are flooding the oversubscribed and overpriced private renting sector and any alleged 'choice' is probably somewhat illusory.

2) The continuing disastrous reduction in supply of social housing has meant that it has more and more become an option for the vulnerable alone, rather than a genuine mass option for housing that it used to be. Therefore it follows that an attack on this sector's housing benefit provision is much more likely to hit the vulnerable which, in most people's eyes, is worse than hitting fit, healthy people should just get on with it.

But again, that theory falls down due to that lack of supply of social housing has meant that vulnerable people fall through the gaps and are stuck with the private sector. In fact, because owner-occupation does look like a much better deal than private renting for solvent, healthy people, you have to wonder if most of those left in the private rented sector do have some element of vulnerability.

So to my mind, those two above reasons set out why a bedroom tax applied to social tenants is worse than one applied to private tenants. My caveats simply meant that, like most generalisations, the differences do not hold true 100% and are less likely to hold true as time goes on and the post WW2 social contract is progressively undermined. If you have other ideas please do add them to the comments.

So I think the anti bedroom tax campaigners need to make these points, otherwise to be consistent we need to also campaign against size related benefit restrictions whatever the sector, or be accused of double standards by the ToryDems. Such accusations, if they stick, can often be the death knell of a campaign.

Addendum; It appears that NCC is reviewing all its housing stock to identify any properties with rooms of less than 50 sq ft.Such small rooms will no longer be counted as bedrooms. They are also re-classifying all high rise flats as 1 bed properties, as they are only available to single and couples without children. Of course, a side effect of this welcome application of modern housing standards is that these properties will be less likely to be caught by the bedroom tax. Credit where it's due etc...

*Let's not forget that NCC, like many councils, has made the situation worse for private sector tenants by its monumental failure to administer Discretionary Housing Payments properly. The increased DHP provision to offset the bedroom tax is a drop in the ocean but I'll be keeping an eye on whether it is used properly.

Benefits Certification Returns Qualified by Auditors - Again

NCC has had it's grant claim for Housing and Council Tax Benefits qualified by new auditors KPMG. This seems to be an ongoing issue.

Again, the problem appears to be incorrect classification of overpayments which, as I wrote about before, has an affect on how much central government pays the council towards its benefit expenditure. It may be that the DWP chases up the council for a return of up to £799k, which is just under  0.5% of total expenditure on benefits.

Last time this happened, Deputy Leader Graham Chapman was quite chilled about it, preferring to concentrate on the 99.53% that was classified correctly. However that's slightly misleading as the problem is concerned with the classification of overpayments (which account for a very small part of expenditure), so expressing the sum at risk as a percentage of ALL benefit expenditure is very much turning a frown into a smile.

What's more, pretty much every year the National Audit Office qualifies the DWP's accounts and that tends to be seen as pretty newsworthy, will it be the same locally?

Another thing to bear in mind is that, when it is found that CLAIMANTS fraudulently obtain 0.5% of a benefit's expenditure, as is the case with Disability Living Allowance, it is seen by successive governments, both Labour and Tory, as signifying the end of days. Yet when a local council fucks up to that extent, everybody remains relaxed.

New Discretionary Housing Payments Policy; It's, Erm, Not Brilliant

When I asked my big question about Housing Benefits and DHPs to full council, Cllr Chapman's response mentioned 'local policy and criteria' for awarding DHPs. As I had previously been told there was no such local policy I was intrigued and fired of a FoI request for what must be a new development. Well folks, in defiance of my honest but admittedly cynical expectations, here it is.

It starts off well, explaining the context and background of DHPs and encouragingly, makes the early point that DHPs should not be seen in isolation but as part of a wider strategy to prevent homelessness and maintain housing. Of course saying it is one thing and doing is another but the starting point is actually writing it down clearly and you can't argue with that.

It sort of goes downhill a bit from there. The section detailing the start date of a DHP award (see p5) is very confused. In particular, para ii) gives the incorrect impression that a DHP can only be backdated if a claim is made within a month of the mainstream housing benefits start date. In fact, there is no legal bar on backdating a DHP but, within the discretionary framework, authorities are entitled to set out situations where doing so may be a lower priority than paying for current shortfalls. NCC's policy doesn't even attempt to do that.

This lack of a 'priorities' framework is a repeated problem throughout the policy. It's structure essentially sets out the various problem areas that DHPs may be used to help alleviate, such as young people finding accommodation or preventing homelessness, then goes on to stipulate situations where they would consider a DHP, followed by situations where they would NOT consider one.

This is a massive issue. In discretionary schemes like this you cannot issue such prescriptive guidance, in legal terms it is known as 'fettering discretion'. It goes against the principle that all cases must be judged as individuals  on their own merits.

What you ARE supposed to do is to set out factors which may increase or decrease a person's priority for a DHP. The decision uses this guidance to determine the applicant's overall priority and depending on the budget position, uses this to decide whether to award a payment or not. Of course, you must also recognise that people may present situations that are outside your 'priority' definitions and the priority/non-priority should not simply be shorthand for will/won't get a payment. NCC's policy doesn't begin to do this, it just says 'yes you will get one if you are in list A' and 'no you won't if you're in list B'. Unfortunately, this makes it totally unfit for purpose.

Within this there are other bizarrities. For example, in the 'Young Individuals' section, the list of those who won't be considered for a DHP includes those in 5 bed accommodation who haven't faced a restriction to 4 bed HB levels (one of the standard Tory HB cuts which came into play this year). I mean, it's not impossible I suppose but how many 'young individuals' are going to have families so large that they need a 5 bed house?

A more basic error occurs where, in a couple of the lists where a DHP would not be considered (e.g. p8 and p12), one of the categories is where the council has good reason to believe that the tenancy is not on a commercial basis. The thing is, a tenancy not being on a commercial basis means that a person should be treated as not liable to pay rent and as such wouldn't be entitled to housing benefit at all (see Reg 9(1)(a) HB Regs 2006). As one of the basic entitlement conditions for a DHP is that there must be some entitlement to housing benefit, so in the circumstances where a claimant's tenancy is not considered to be a commercial one the question of a DHP is simply not going to arise. This just gives the impression that the policy was written by someone who has no idea of what they are talking about.

It sort of goes on like that. The last issue that concerns me is that there is no mention of budget profiling throughout the year i.e. planning in advance to ensure you don't spend the lot in three months and take into account known seasonal factors etc. All we get is -

"On a quarterly basis a report detailing all DHP applications received, decisions made and DHP fund available is forwarded to the Head of Service for  approval."

Yeah right, like she's going to bother reading that. When I worked at NCC one HB worker described handing a report to Lisa Black (for it is she) as a reason for nothing else happening on the initiative. Funnily enough, that was about DHPs too, back in 2006.

On the plus side, they have at least got a policy and its existence is useful for anyone trying to challenge a refusal to pay a DHP. Who knows, maybe they pulled their fingers out in response to the fuss I made on here? If so, maybe they'll read this post and look at it again.

In the meantime, anybody who IS challenging a DHP decision, my advice is to get a good lawyer on board and consider challenging the whole policy via Judicial Review.

That Answer In Full; Why Housing Benefits Are 'Not Brilliant'

I've just had the minutes through for the full council meeting on 11th June. I asked a question about problems with the Housing Benefits service and here is the answer I got from Graham Chapman. I've added the odd comment as you'd expect.

"Thank you, Lord Mayor, and I promise that the answer will be marginally shorter than the question.

[Guffaw! He's known for his jokes is Cllr Chapman]

Between May 2009 and May 2012 there has been a 14.8% increase in the benefit caseload increasing the annual benefit paid from £133 million to £175 million, that is an increase of 31%. Although not a national comparator, Nottingham puts 82% of cases received into payment, compared with a Core City average of 70%. In simple terms this means that more people that need support are getting that support in Nottingham than in the average Core City, and that is very important point.

[That's interesting. Is Chappers claiming that other core cities get round the issue by simply not paying benefit to people who are eligible? I wonder what these other core cities would have to say about that.

And how relevant is this to speed of processing? You still have to process the claim and make a decision even when benefit isn't payable.]

There has also been a marked increase in the caseload for the private rented sector, an increase of 63% over the same period. Now I am aware that on basic statistics, Nottingham’s performance on speed of processing new claims and changes in circumstances relative to other English local authorities is not brilliant. For 2011/12 Nottingham City Council performance for all new claims was 53 days and 27 days for changes of circumstance. The All England average was 24 days and 12 days respectively.

['On basic statistics'. 'Not brilliant'. It's like pulling teeth.]

On average we allow 36 days for provision of information, with reminder letters and follow-up action taken to secure evidence in support of claims, whereas the vast majority of high performers allow around 14 days, with limited follow-up activity. 

[Can I just stop you there? ALL local authorities are required to allow claimants at least a month to provide any information required to support their claim if the authority notifies them it is required (see sub-para 8). So if these 'high performers' really are cutting claims off after only 14days they are acting unlawfully. Not beyond the realms of possibility I know but without evidence I'm sorry Cllr Chapman but on this one, I name thee 'Bullshitter'.]

If our focus was only on processing times and only on the stats, rather than getting money into people’s pockets then 12%, or some 5,000 people, would not have received support they have. That is quite the opposite of what is implied in the question. In other words, we do not have a cut off date which allows us to say the case has been dealt with, we keep the case on file and work with it, and that way we get far more money into people’s pockets, but our performance statistics don’t look as good, and if anybody asks me which one I prefer, I prefer getting money into people’s pockets than having nice neat performance statistics which show us in a false light.

[Again, this is clearly bollocks as it's based on the same false premise as above. Is Chapman seriously claiming that if you submit a half-completed form and don't respond to chase-ups for 5 years, they'll still process the claim back to day one? That's not how I remember things going. Councils are allowed to allow longer than a month to provide missing info and there are many cases when they should. On this basis the claim that NCC allows an average of 36 days doesn't look over-generous.]

Since July 2011 the benefits service has been working with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to improve performance however. There has been significant investment in the service, both in terms of 13 new posts and additional temporary staff to assist with the speed and accuracy of processing. As a result, new average claims processing time has reduced by 9 days to 44 days in May 2012, and we anticipate further improvements. Performance on changes in circumstances will take longer to improve, the focus of activity during June, July and August is to bring the change of circumstances to a 14 day turnaround. On this matter the questioner does have a point, we are concerned, but we are doing something about it.

[13 extra staff is good. However, I'm a bit cynical about the sticking plaster/PR friendly use of temporary staff not least because of the cost.]

Now, on subsidy, it is acknowledged that in 2010/11 housing benefit subsidy was qualified to the value of £729,000. This was out of a total claim of over £157 million, so that means it is a 99.53% accuracy rate. This is consistent with other authorities of our size and complexity. Some £300,000 of the £729,000 was subsidy claimed in error when the equivalent expenditure had not been incurred, so there was no loss to the public purse nor citizens in the benefits system. Again, this is not what the question implied.

[I wonder what Cllr Chapman's response would be to a benefit claimant who claimed benefit 'in error' when the 'equivalent expenditure' in rent 'had not been incurred'? I suspect he'd have been very happy to have seen him down the Magistrates Court. And it's good to see Chapman being so blase about the remaining £400k.]

On to discretionary housing payments (DHP). Unsuccessful applications for discretionary housing payments are in simple terms the result of the claim not meeting the qualifying criteria.

[Really? That's a bit odd seeing as the potential eligibility is so wide. The assumption is that eligibility exceeds demand and that authorities use their discretion to decide who should receive a payment.]

The local policy and criteria itself was developed in line with the national parameters and in consultation with benefit practitioners, the welfare rights sector, housing professionals in the City, and we have a very good relationship with them.

[What is this 'local policy and criteria' of which you speak? Has Cllr Chapman seen it? In 2009 there was no such thing and the (small) bit of info I've been given about these meetings with the welfare rights sector etc didn't mention anything about drawing up local criteria. Not that they were minuted mind so their usefulness is limited. Maybe it's time for another FoI request to see if this has changed?]

In 2011/12, in recognition of the impact of changes to local housing allowance rates, the Government increased DHP fund allocation, more than doubling it for Nottingham, and I’ll give the Government credit for that. However, due to a transitional protection scheme introduced by the same Government, the full impact of the local housing allowance reforms was not felt during 2011/12, therefore, to expend the money would not have been appropriate. 

[Why the hell not? The best way to demonstrate need is to spend what you've been given. That also serves to increase the next year's allocation.And this claim isn't really consistent with the near 30% increase in applications in 2011/12.]

The DWP therefore agreed that the authority’s underspend could be carried forward to the next financial year. Nottingham City requested that £62,741 be carried forward to 2012/13 making our total provision £274,621.

[I like the way that he makes it sound like it was all planned, rather than an arse-covering exercise. Sorry but I'm not convinced by that at all.]

The take-up and availability of DHPs are widely promoted by frontline benefit colleagues as well as colleagues in housing, welfare rights and within the charitable sector. Thank you."

[Yeah right. That's why the council's leaflet on DHPs hasn't been changed for 7 years and refers you to an office that no longer exists. Oh and while we're here, notice how he makes no mention of the past record of DHP performance over the last 11 years.]

So, that was Cllr Chapman's response. I would rate it as inadequate and misleading to be honest. It's full of unsupported assertions along with blatant inaccuracies. It's a list of excuses that simply don't hold water, like a child caught by a shopkeeper with sweets he hadn't paid for. However, to someone who knows little about Housing Benefit and none of the background to DHPs and their administration in Nottingham, which probably includes the vast majority of councillors, it probably comes across as a robust response.

In Cllr Chapman's defence he probably had no idea what Discretionary Housing Payments are until he was given the above rubbish to read out but, at the end of the day, he's put his name to the response and he is the Portfolio Holder for the service. He is responsible for his answer and it simply isn't satisfactory.

Housing Benefits - The Council Answers?

I got an email today confirming that my question to full council about housing benefits WILL be answered at the next full council meeting.

So, if you're not doing anything on 11 June at 2pm pop down to the Council House and live tweet it...because I don't think I can make it myself and I'd like to know what they say! Oh, botheration...

Anyway, I am genuinely interested in the response and when the minutes come out I will do a post quoting it in full with any commentary that I deem necessary. Such commentary will include 'well said' etc if justified but will also include links to evidence-based rebuttals if that's what the answer requires. If it turns out to be mostly the latter the resultant blogpost will be sent round to all councillors.

In all seriousness, I am genuinely interested in the answers. The question was drafted from around three years of research and certainly was not intended to be a tripping up exercise; the points I raised really do need both answering and tackling. I really do hope that this raises awareness among councillors about the reality of benefits administration in Nottingham and that real improvement is triggered.

In a related issue, NCC is having to gear up to some big new responsibilities as a result of the government's 'welfare reform'. The Post has already written a very good article about one aspect of this, the replacement of the national Council Tax Benefit scheme with a local one, but another development sees the responsibility to administer the discretionary social fund (including crisis loans etc) transferring to councils like NCC.

Both developments are extremely worrying. As far as the Council Tax Benefit change is concerned, the big issue is that it masks a 10% cut in central funding for the scheme and councils look like they're being set up to be the fall-guys for that. Less attention has been focused on NCC taking over a local version of the social fund. I'm particularly worried because the last time NCC took charge of a discretionary benefit scheme it didn't go so well. And it still isn't. You've presumably guessed that I'm talking about our old mate the Discretionary Housing Payments scheme here?

At least NCC appears to have realised there is an issue as it has apparently set aside funding for a new policy officer to do the thinking on these two issues (not DHPs natch). So far Lisa Black and the policy officer responsible for failing to mention DHPs to One Nottingham have been in charge of NCC's welfare reform response. I'm sure it would be unfair to see this new resource as being evidence that they're not up to the job but hey...

However, it looks like the job will go internally and I'm not convinced the expertise is there. And before you ask, no of course I'm not suggesting I should be able to apply for it, I'm still not medically fit, I also have a major skills gap and there's no bloody way I'd go for any job which requires me to report to Lisa Black again cos she's not fit to lick my boots.

So. None of this is looking good. Even if we do get good answers to my big question, it's all changing soon with Universal Credit and these new local responsibilities. It really is not the time to be on benefits believe me.

Proud to be Still Failing to Pay Discretionary Housing Payments

Yep, it's bee-in-the-bonnet time again. I've just got back a response to a Freedom of Info request about the most recent two years of Discretionary Housing Payments. I don't like to ask every year, that would overwork our hard-pressed Information Governance Team.

What this means is that I can update my occasionally published table illustrating past performance on the issue. I've also added a running total at the bottom.

Now, I previously speculated whether NCC would pull their socks up and sort DHPs out seeing as the government had impose swingeing Housing Benefit cuts and had increased DHP allocations as a kind of sticking plaster solution. After all, those in poverty were more likely to need them and consequences for not sorting it would be much worse right?

Have a look at the last two years on the table. See how the government contribution more than doubles in 2011/12? See how the number of applications increases from 2010/11's 556 to 701, possibly due to the cuts starting to bite? And see how the number of successful applications drops from 201 to 176 and the total amount paid out drops from £71,183 to £56,575.

So. The council gets given more money to hand out as DHPs. Economic conditions are not improving and benefit cuts are starting to bite resulting in more applications. And their solution is to make FEWER awards. Not more awards. FEWER.

WT absolute F?

Because of this and the other aspects of worsening Housing Benefits performance I have decided to post a question to be asked at Full Council. I know it's a bit long and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it gets knocked back on that basis (even though there's no limit given on questions to full council), failing that it'll probably be shunted off for a written response. Anyway, I reproduce it here and I'll let you know if it goes anywhere.


"Question to Full Council Concerning the Operation of the Housing Benefits Service

I would like to ask the following of the relevant Portfolio Holder and the Full Council;

Should the Portfolio Holder and the Council not be concerned at the extremely poor performance of the Housing Benefits Service in this time of continued recession and Tory benefit cuts?
 
According to the latest statistics available (Q2 and Q3 of the last financial year) Nottingham was the second worst in the country for speed of processing new claims. It was the fifth worst for processing changes in circumstances. Does this not exacerbate the problems of benefit cuts and poverty already experienced by claimants? Don't delays in processing changes in circumstances lead inevitably to more overpayments, which is in neither the council's or claimants' interests?
 
Furthermore, NCC has had to repay considerable sums of overpaid housing benefit subsidy. Over £400,000 in 2008/9, £78,000 in 2009/10 and potentially £729,000 for 2010/11. If a claimant received overpayments of benefits so consistently they'd be prosecuted for fraud. When will this issue be tackled?
 
Are the Portfolio Holder and the Council also not deeply concerned about the alarming maladministration of the Discretionary Housing Payments scheme?
 
In the 11 years of the existence of the Discretionary Housing Payments Scheme, the Housing Benefits Service has paid out the equivalent of the full government grant in only two years (2009/10 and 2010/11) and has never paid out more than 51% of the full amount it is allowed to by law in any financial year. And yet the majority of applications are refused. The highest success rate for applications was 55.4% in the first year of operation. After that it varied between 21.2% and 53.3%. Over the life of the scheme 33% of applications have resulted in an award. Is this high rate of refusal not a strange anomaly?
 
In terms of the amounts paid out, over the life of the scheme so far NCC could have received £889,132 in central government grant for DHPs yet it only paid out £527614. That is £361,518 that could have been paid out to Nottingham's poorest citizens AT NO EXTRA COST TO THE COUNCIL.
 
Except that it's worse than that. Between the years 2003/4 and 2010/11, if the previous year's allocation from central government was not fully utilised, the following year's allocation was reduced. This happened in Nottingham year on year from 2003/4 to 2008/9. Imagine if the central government grant had remained at 2003/4 levels throughout the rest of the life of the scheme (up to 2011/12 when the system changed) Nottingham would have received £1,131,390. That is a very conservative estimate, all it would have required would have been for the Housing Benefits Service to have paid out what it was given by the government and it makes no allowance for any inflationary increases. And of course, if more had been paid out then the next year's allocation would have increased. On this very conservative basis then Nottingham's citizens have lost out on £603,776. Think how many evictions that could have prevented, all at no extra cost to the City Council. Does the Portfolio Holder and the Council see this as a success?
 
In 2011/12 the system was changed to take into account vicious Tory cuts to mainstream Housing Benefits. DHPs were increased in an attempt to offset the worst of the effects. Nottingham's central government allocation increased to £119,386 from the previous year's £55,863 i.e. it more than doubled. Applications increased to 701 from the previous year's 556, perhaps reflecting the initial bite of the cuts to mainstream benefits. So what happened to the number of successful applications? It dropped from 201 in 2010/11 to 176 in 2011/12. So, the grant allocation was doubled, mainstream benefits were cut and we continued in recession, yet the Housing Benefits Service decided that FEWER people should be paid a bit extra to help with their rent. Can the Portfolio Holder explain why this was the case?
 
During this time Nottingham faced a recession, like the rest of the country. The council launched a campaign called 'We're On Your Side'. Why were DHPs not promoted as part of this? One Nottingham has held two sessions to discuss the effects of benefit cuts on the citizens of Nottingham yet DHPs were never even mentioned, when the scheme is one of the few measures at the council's disposal to mitigate these cuts. Why are they not shouting about DHPs from the rooftops?
 
What is the Council going to do about this double whammy of bottom-of-the-table performance of the mainstream Housing Benefit scheme along with the year on year failure to properly administer the Discretionary Housing Payments scheme that is faced by Nottingham's poorest? Does this not reflect an abject failure by the Housing Benefit Service Management?"

More Housing Benefits Woe

Things have yet to get any better for Nottingham's Housing and Council Tax Benefit claimants. Latest figures for the third quarter (i.e. Oct - Dec 2011, click for the Excel file) show little to no improvement in speed of processing since I looked at their second quarter stats.

Nottingham remains the second worst in Great Britain for processing new claims, although the average time taken has decreased slightly from 60 days to 59. Way to go NCC.

Things aren't quite as bad for the average time taken to process changes in circumstances where NCC is only the 5th worst in the country with 33 days, a slight improvement on the previous quarter's 36.

This demonstrates an ongoing issue of worsening service when you haven't got the Audit Commission popping in every year and awarding you stars leading to nice headlines in the paper.

As mentioned before, NCC recently threw a pile of money at the problem and brought in a team of private agency staff at a time when it is supposedly committed to reducing temp and agency staff (see para 1.3 of this report). This won't show up until the first quarter of next year I'd guess as the agency staff are being hired for 12 weeks (i.e. a quarter) and I suspect it is being timed to ensure that the figures for the first quarter of the financial year show the maximum possible improvement in case Lisa Black is summoned to some inconvenient committee or other to explain why her service is so shit.

Quick! Band Aid For the Housing Benefits Service!

Following my recent pieces on the decline and fall of NCC's Housing Benefits service (including the revelation that the most recent figures put them as second worst in the country for processing new claims), all of a sudden NCC goes galloping in with a 'solution'.

Yes they are running to a private sector agency to get a load of temporary staff. Apparently, £112k gets you 12 staff for 12 weeks, an equivalent cost of £40k/yr for each one. That will include employer's NI payments of course but you can bet it doesn't include any pension contributions like a directly employed staff member would be entitled to. I'd guess a directly employed Benefits Processing staff member would be on around £20k so actual cost of their employment would be around £26k. So in round numbers the agency staff are costing something like half as much again as a directly employed staff member.

Like I said before, they're just lurching from crisis to crisis.

In other Housing Benefits news, the ever generous government has been handing out cash to help councils 'ease the transition' of the HB cuts. This money is not designed to be paid out as, say, part of the DHP scheme but to be used for infrastructure to deal with the fallout.

Slightly chillingly, look at the first item the government suggests as an intended use of the money -

"For example, preventing homelessness, negotiating with landlords, supporting people who need to move, and giving money advice."

Hasn't the government been telling us that nobody will be made homeless by these cuts?

Nottingham is getting the princely sum of £57,992 for 2012. That's just over half what NCC are planning on frittering away fixing their current problems. Doesn't bode well.

Can Housing Benefits Get Any Worse?

Recently I wrote about how NCC had to repay over £400k in housing benefits subsidy due to 'shortcutting' procedures for classifying overpayments in the 2008/9 financial year. To put this into context the District Auditor initially estimated that over £2m had been overclaimed so it's fair to say her initial estimates, based on sampling, aren't carved in stone.

And we should also note that, after a strip being torn off them in 2008/9 things improved markedly in 2009/10 as the DA only found an estimated £78k overclaimed.

So problem solved yes?

No. The equivalent report for 2010/11 has now arrived in NCC's inbox and is to be discussed at the next Audit Committee meeting. Considering that the DA estimates a potential overclaim for the year of £729k the language is somewhat restrained. There is mention of a separate letter to the Head of Revenues and Benefits (my old mucker Lisa Black who's responsible for all this mismanagement) and perhaps there's a bit more plain speaking in that. I doubt it will go so far as the required "Why the fuck are you still in your job" but there you go.

The problem this time is apparently Council Tax Benefit, rather than Housing Benefit with 53% of the sample considered found to be incorrect. That's pretty bad.

NCC's Housing Benefits service is clearly lurching from crisis to crisis. As I wrote recently, the most recent performance figures show them to be the SECOND WORST IN THE COUNTRY for speed of processing new claims, the sort of thing that results in people losing their homes. Predictably there is an 'action plan' to solve the latest problems and all HB staff are to go through mandatory retraining (with exams at the end!) but, looking at all these rather ugly numbers and my own experience of some of the personalities involved, they really should be aiming their attention at the top.

Housing Benefits Getting Even Shitter - Second Worst in the Country at Processing New HB Claims

Every now and then I like to pass the time by having a look at Housing Benefits 'Speed of Processing' stats. I last did this back in March last year when the most recent figures we had were Q2 2010. I now have those for Q2 2011 (Excel file).

Things were looking pretty bad for NCC last year and things seem to have got even worse in the latest results. For the equivalent quarter in 2010 speed of processing all new claims was 37 days and for changes in circumstances 14 days. For Q2 2011 these increased to 60 days and 36 days.

These figures are truly shocking by modern standards and leaves NCC by far the worst in the East Midlands on both counts. The next worst is Derby City with processing new claims at 42 days and changes in circumstances at 29 days. Leicester is at 29 days and 16 days. There are only three other LAs in the East Midlands with new claims processing times of more than 30 days, out of a total of 40 councils. It means that NCC is the second worst in Great Britain at processing new claims, with only Durham worse, taking an average of 69 days.

This increasingly poor service is no doubt in part due to the recession but a lack of inspection and piss-poor management are also key factors. I recently wrote about Housing Benefits having to return over £400k in benefits subsidies, an error which can be laid firmly at senior managers' door.

Unfortunately, due to its forthcoming abolition the Audit Commission doesn't appear to running any more inspections of  LA benefits services, not that it was difficult for cynical managers to manipulate the system to make the numbers look good. So things will undoubtedly continue to get worse.

Benefit Subsidy Overclaim - NCC Repays Over £400k

Nearly two years ago now I wrote about how NCC's Housing Benefits service were clobbered by the Audit Commission for overclaiming central government subsidy for paying benefit claims. I subsequently discovered that there had already been a heads up on the issue from NCC's own Internal Audit team who expressed alarm about 'experienced staff' shortcutting the process for classifying overpayments, one of the issues that had led to the criticism from the Audit Commission.

There was some talk about challenging the Audit Commission's original statement that £2m worth of subsidies had been overpaid but then it all went a bit quiet. It was down to the Dept for Work and Pensions to decide on the final amount and whether it should be recovered.

I've now managed to get hold of the final figure for the amount that was overpaid and it comes to £408,655, a considerable reduction on that initial estimate. Initially the DWP appeared to want £683,543 back but NCC challenged this further. You get the feeling the DWP gave in just for a quiet life.

So, NCC had to repay over £400k in Housing Benefit subsidy in circumstances that Internal Audit described as 'shortcutting' the correct procedures. To put that into context, they had found only £300k in claimant fraud over the same period of time. I wonder how much sympathy claimants would get for 'shortcutting' the claims procedures?

Still getting that down from £2m is quite an achievement, wonder why we didn't see a nice big press release about their efforts?

Benefit Fraud - Because You're Worth It

I've occasionally made the odd comment about NCC's record on pursuing benefit fraud which hasn't been super complementary. No doubt there are people within certain circles who think that means that I'm against any form of sanction against benefit fraudsters and thing there should be a free-for-all.

Not true. I accept and in many cases positively encourage the proportionate pursuit and prosecution of people who defraud the benefits system. The key word there is 'proportionate'. I also strongly object to constant government sponsored propaganda on the subject which simply serves to demonise benefit claimants and put people off making legitimate claims. It is also an outrage that nothing like the same effort is made against those who defraud the tax system.

Another issue to consider is that anti-fraud action does have a cost and it should justify itself in value for money terms like anything else. Well, I've just stumbled across a bit of information which makes me wonder whether NCC manages to do that.

In 2009 I wrote about the fact that NCC boasted in a press release that it had reclaimed around £300k from benefit fraud. presumably it will have increased since then but it's likely to be in the same ballpark. At the time this amounted to 0.24% of total benefit expenditure, about 10% of comparable rates of recovery nationally.

Here's the new bit. In an aside in a report to the Audit Committee it is said that the benefit fraud team has 10 officers, so that gives us a vague idea of the cost of the council's expenditure on anti-fraud measures. I say vague because we don't know if those 10 officers comprise the entire team including admin and management/team leaders but let's presume it does. At a very conservative estimate I reckon a team that size is going to cost approx £300k in employee costs alone. The officers concerned will be relatively senior because they must have 'authorised officer' status (see s.109A of the SSAA 1992) allowing them to investigate people, including getting info from banks, utility companies and stuff (you did know they can do that when investigating you for fraud didn't you?). You will presumably have significant travel expenses because fraud inspectors spend a lot of time sitting outside people's houses watching for illicit visitors. And of course, if a prosecution does occur this will mean shedloads more money spent on legal services.

So on this basis I think we are in a fairly strong position to question whether NCC is getting value for money from it's anti fraud measures.

Questions the 'Post' Should Have Asked NCC About Benefit Fraud

The Nottingham Post has published an article about Housing Benefit Fraud committed against Nottingham City Council. Unfortunately it actually tells us very little and merely provides an excuse to run the 'BENEFITS FRAUD INCREASING SHOCK HORROR' meme again. It's a classic case of not asking the right questions or, if they did, not putting the answers to them in your article.

The headline is that benefit fraud prosecutions have increased by 39% and Graham Chapman says that the tough economic climate is to blame. He may well be right of course but we can't tell that from the article.

You see, as the article does explain, prosecution is not the only option open to councils when dealing with benefit fraud. There is the administrative penalty (a kind of bribe/blackmail designed to persuade you to 'fess up, pay a chunk of extra money you haven't got so you don't have to go to court), cautions and simply requiring the money to be repaid. There are arguments in favour of all these options depending on the individual situation. In short therefore, an increase in court prosecutions could simply be down to a change in prosecution policy, formal or otherwise*. In fairness the Post does say that NCC is resorting to prosecution more often but I can't tell from the article whether that was Chapman expressing NCC's declared policy or whether this is simply the Post reporter's conclusion.

Taking the article at face value then, NCC's response to increasing financial woes is to make things worse for those most affected by prosecuting more often when desperate times force poor decision making. I'm not sure that reflects too well on NCC.

It would have been helpful if the Post had asked NCC whether detected fraud had also increased as this would at least help answer the 'changed/not changed prosecution policy' question i.e. if greater detected fraud occurred along with more prosecutions then we could conclude 'no change'. On the other hand, if you assume that any organisation would get better at finding fraud over time** (practice makes perfect and all that) then if there isn't an increase in fraud then it may not be unreasonable to conclude that NCC has merely toughened its stance. It has to be said that NCC doesn't seem to actually find much benefit fraud, managing to find fraud worth only 0.24% of total benefit expenditure in 2009, about 10% of the national rate. This means that the margin of error is larger and any claim of an increase is less significant. The fact that we're talking about an increase in prosecutions from 31 to 43 in a six month period reinforces this concern.

We know that actual Housing Benefit expenditure has increased by nearly 20% in only two years (I think that's known as 'rocketing' in the trade) and that is without doubt down to the worsening economic conditions. Would we also expect that fraud as a proportion of this expenditure would also increase? It would be worthwhile knowing if that is what is happening.

If we had been given the figures for fraud I'd also want to be sure that they really were actual fraud as opposed to 'fraud and error' which is what tends to be reported in order to amplify the alarm bells further, the 'error' of course tending to combine official and customer error and leaving the general public to assume it's all down to claimants. I've previously uncovered evidence of a perverse incentive for NCC to try and reclassify their own errors as customer error, combine this with clear evidence of the Benefits Service's standards slipping in general and you've got a bit of a mess brewing.

Ok, so I've gone further than you might expect a local newspaper to go writing an article afresh but the information for Post reporters to use has been up here for a while and all the links to sources are still fully functional. There may well be a big story here but, unfortunately somebody somewhere still has a lot of work to do to find out.

* I'm getting indications that quite a bit of high level decision-making is being done 'off-minutes' so to speak, almost certainly to evade Freedom of Information requests.

** Naive I know.

Discretionary Housing Payments - Any Change?

So then, back to my favourite obsession. Where had we got to?

Ah yes, last we heard was that in the 2009/10 year NCC got £59,639 from the government towards DHPs and, joy of joys, the total actually paid out went up for the first time in years to £66,677 from the previous year's £51,882.

Strange then that the 2010/11 central government grant dropped to £55,863. You see, normally, the amount allocated should be half way between the previous year's grant and actual expenditure so an increase in DHP payouts should pull the grant up. So I'm not sure what that was about.

Anyway that was the last year that the old rules applied because since then the lovely Tories have cut mainstream Housing Benefit even more and part of the 'sweetener' for the deal was an extra nationwide £10m DHP allocation (making £30m in total) to allow councils to apply a scrap of band aid. This extra £10m is not allocated via the normal formula mentioned above it is weighted in favour of councils who would lose the most from the cuts which, as I've posted before, kinda means Nottingham.

Now I have been ranting about this for a while because it means that tenants on benefits will be even more reliant on DHPs to keep a roof over their heads. One Nottingham failed to even mention DHPs in it's recent 'concern' about benefit cuts. So I was interested to find out how much Nottingham had actually got for the 2011/12 financial year i.e. the current one. Turns out it's £119,316 which is more than double that of last year. This implies that a big chunk of that is from this extra £10m. Councils are also allowed to spend a certain amount of their own money on DHPs and if NCC spent the maximum it is allowed to that would be a potential total fund of over £298k.

So, we know that Nottingham is expected to do disproportionally badly out of mainstream HB cuts. We know that Nottingham's share of the band-aid is bigger than most. What we don't have is any evidence that NCC has anything approaching a plan for ensuring this extra money is used most effectively.

The result of this is that any mitigation of the worst effects of the HB cuts that would have been possible from this extra funding probably won't happen and we will see a big increase in rent arrears and evictions as a result. How many of these could be prevented by a decent DHP strategy is impossible for me to say but if only one person loses their home when there's money there to stop it I think that's criminal.

Note; if you are currently suffering a shortfall between your housing benefit and your rent I would strongly recommend that you apply for DHPs, even if you've been turned down before because of the increased budget.

The forms are available here. Note that the DHP leaflet there was prepared in 2005 and the contact address is for a building that doesn't exist anymore. That probably tells you all you need to know about the amount of effort NCC puts in and how much they give a shit about you becoming homeless.

Addendum; I've just found that One Nottingham have had further discussions on welfare issues at their May Meeting. A policy document is available but ON seem to have got bored of publishing their minutes. Obviously there was no mention of DHPs in that paper. It seems to be all about blaming the government which in itself is fine but it's more productive to discuss the things that you do actually have some control over.

Housing Benefit Expenditure

It's not one of mine (because that would be 'vexatious' and we can't have that can we?) but there's an interesting FoI response on the 'What Do They Know' website about Housing Benefit expenditure.

The reply gives us the figures for actual expenditure on Housing Benefit and the number of claimants for the last three financial years. Expenditure has increased from £105,437,333 for 2008/9 to £125,973,607 in 2010/11, an increase of just under 20%. It's not a particularly meaningful comparison but to put that in context if expenditure had increase purely by the rate of inflation it would have increased to £109,654,826.

Furthermore, and partly in explanation for the above inflation increase in expenditure, the number of claimants rose from 30,465 to 34,085, an increase of about 11%. This means average annual expenditure per claimant has risen from £3461 to £3695, whereas by inflation alone it would have been £3599.

It's not clear what conclusions we can draw from this. I certainly don't think it is fair to blame NCC, in fact it's more arguable that NCC and the various advice agencies have been successful in increasing awareness of HB entitlement in Nottingham which is a good thing. I also don't feel safe in drawing any conclusions about rent levels due to the complex way in which HB is calculated, other variables include government set 'applicable amounts' (a kind of income threshold above which HB entitlement starts to reduce) and of course people's incomes.

I do feel on stronger ground in guessing that the figures are hardly consistent with a booming and expanding Nottingham economy. "No shit Sherlock", I hear you cry and you'd be right; it's no secret that the economy is in the shit pit and has been over the period covered by the figures. And despite NCC's tendency to claim the credit for any inward investment or other economy boosting measures in the city, government in the UK is highly centralised and I don't really think councils really have that much power to buck the national trend.

Housing Benefits Standards Slipping - Worst in E. Midlands for New Claims

I have just found the most recent figures for Housing Benefits processing speeds on the DWP website. The numbers relate to Q2 2010/11, i.e. July-Aug 2010.

It's pretty poor news for NCC. They took an average of 37 days to process new claims for benefits over the quarter. This makes them joint worst performing (with Harborough) in the East Midlands. You probably won't see a NCC press release on that.

Worse still, this disguises serious in quarter deterioration in performance with monthly figures of 33days (July), 36 days (August) and 44 days (September).

They were better at processing changes in circumstances at an average of 14 days which is about mid table. The best for this was 3 days (Daventry) and the worst 27 days (Derby).

Compare these figures to Leicester City which took 19 days for new claims and 11 days for changes in circumstances, an awful lot better. LCC had an Audit Commission inspection in May 2009 and scored zero stars. Its average new claims time then was 37.5 days, hardly worse than Nottingham's is now. They were also criticised for not using their full allocation for Discretionary Housing Payments, something I've had a lot to say about in Nottingham.

This is relevant because NCC's benefits service hasn't had an inspection since at least 2007 because the Audit Commission sees them as 'low risk' due to their record of getting 4 star assessments, albeit after adjusting their service provision around the needs of the inspections.

All this comes after last year's revelations of serious processing accuracy problems and dodgy subsidy claims. On this basis if NCC was inspected tomorrow they would probably score one star at best.