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.

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.

One Down...

The 'Post' is on fire these days with revelations about NCC and today's is the news that our old mate Hassan Ahmed has decided not to stand in the upcoming elections. The Post has suggested that his decision may be due to an upcoming report from the Audit Commission concerning irregularities in the Future Jobs Fund although Ahmed denies this.

Slightly frustrating for me because I actually got a tip-off a few weeks back about some dodginess involving Ahmed, the FJF and another local anti-hero but I couldn't verify it. As such I didn't dare run it for fear of a communication from m'learned friends. And I'm afraid I'm still chicken about naming the other alleged party so we'll all just have to wait for that Audit Commission report.

It's good that at least one of the chiselling little crooks has been upended, especially after the cover up over the housing allocations scandal meaning that Cllr Grocock and Tyron Browne have managed to wriggle free, so far at least. It's a long shot but if the poisonous influence that is Jon Collins can be removed at the election NCC will be immeasurably improved.

Addendum - JoCo wrote a puff piece about FJF on his blog recently. For some reason he seems to have switched the comments off...

District Auditor LOLs

It's been mentioned before that NCC has abandoned its investigation of the housing allocations scandal. As we know, they've sort of spent £100k on paying outside solicitors to do Legal Services' normal work while the cosy in-house team 'investigated' the housing corruption that went on.

The District Auditor says that this is reasonable (see p4 and beyond). After all, £100k is a lot of money.

The District Auditor charged £388k (para 8 p5) for her annually required services. Yet abandoning an investigation into the worst public housing scandal since Dame Shirley Porter's shennanigins, having only spent just over 25% of that figure is apparently 'reasonable'.

Btw, in an unrelated fact, Jon Collins works as a self employed consultant to the Audit Commission.

Another Day, Another Report on Housing Benefit Incompetence

Next week's Audit Committee meeting will have another opportunity to enjoy what is becoming a regular ritual; the presentation of yet another report detailing what a bunch of fuck-ups the housing benefits service is. I say fuck-ups but there is the hint of something more sinister going on, more on that in a bit.

This latest installment consists of NCC's Internal Audit services latest report on the housing benefits service which it seems they now do annually. I wrote about the 2009 edition before. The 2010 version was prepared in February of this year but we only get to see it if it's one of the sample of Internal Audit reports that are put before the Audit Committee. As such it was done at the same time as the report from the Audit Commission that tore HB a new one and resulted in the possibility of them having to pay a £2m subsidy overclaim back to central government. As far as I know that's still under dispute.

So what did this latest report say? Well they picked up on the total lack of quality control that the Audit Commission was so scathing about. This included a lack of checks on claims processed by external firm Mouchel which is just asking for trouble. As a reminder, Mouchel got over £266k of our money in 2008/9 for who knows how much worth of benefit claims processed. I'd want to keep a close eye on that myself.

A very interesting piece of detail concerns the reporting of different types of overpayments. Essentially, it seems that if errors in benefit assessments caused by the council itself (as opposed to claimants) are below a certain level (approx £616k) NCC still gets full subsidy on it. If it's between a certain range (£616k - £693k) only 40% of subsidy is paid and above that latter figure they get none. In other words there's a pretty strong incentive to keep council caused errors down, which makes sense.

Other types of error are treated differently (see para 400 onwards), for example, error caused by claimants always attracts a 40% subsidy. Errors which are the fault of the DWP or HMRC are fully reimbursed.

Now, this wasn't mentioned in the Audit Commission report but it seems that NCC is prone to incorrect classification of overpayments, occurring in 25% of a sample checked by Internal Audit. From the report -

"For 2008-9 we claimed £0.5m LA Error but would receive no subsidy if the figure exceeded £0.7m...

...Failure to follow proper procedures results in incorrect subsidy classification – we understand that, despite training, experienced staff continue to shortcut such a procedure. Our testing of 20 overpayments showed 25% where failure to follow procedure led to overpayment classification errors. Overpayment classification has not been checked since Jun 08."

It's not explicitly stated but by reading between the lines you get the feeling that the results of incorrect classification only go one way i.e. to reduce local authority error and retaining the subsidy. This would not be inconsistent with the Audit Commission's conclusion that a major overpayment of subsidy had occurred.

And the slightly tart statement about 'experienced staff' who 'despite training' tend to 'shortcut' the classification procedures. Which results in lower rates of overpayments caused by local authority error. And more subsidy...

Hmmm. Like I said, it's not explicitly stated.

Anyway, as I've said before, Internal Audit would have to march on the Audit Committee wearing rainbow striped lederhosen carrying a 30ft banner saying 'Housing Benefits Staff Are Wrongly Classifying Overpayments So We Get More Subsidy' before it would even raise an eyebrow. I predict a total lack of concern along with a side order of vague promises including 'action plans*' and 'targeted training' etc next Friday.

*If you ever have the misfortune to work at NCC you will soon notice that they love 'action plans'. Generally speaking, in NCC's usage of the phrase it means close to the exact opposite of what it says resulting in very little action and the absence of anything resembling a plan. At NCC, 'action plans' and 'reports' have become the end in itself, instead of the means to an end.

Bonfire of the Quangos

Recent news that the Audit Commission is to be axed is an interesting one for Nottingham.

Given the council's necessarily close relationship with the Commission you might have expected our political leaders to have felt the need for some comment on its planned demise. After all they're not normally shy on criticising the new government's policies, JoCo was quite vocal on elected mayors, the budget and the scrapping of EMDA. But not a peep about the Audit Commission.

Of course, NCC has always had a somewhat difficult relationship with the Audit Commission. There was the Public Interest Report into the mess at Nottingham City Homes, none too flattering corporate inspection reports followed by a slap on the wrist for dishonestly spinning the findings of those Commission assessments.

Even the bizarre love affair between the Commission and the Housing Benefits service seems to have cooled. Recently the Commission caught Housing Benefits out for having overclaimed their subsidy to the tune of £2m. Now, after happily accepting its judgment when awarding them 4 star ratings HB are now challenging the Commission's assessment of the level of overclaim, reckoning it to be out by a factor of nearly 5 (see 'Housing and Council Tax Benefit Subsidy Claim 2008/09' p23 of this document)-

"The housing benefit and council tax benefit subsidy claim 2008/09 was qualified by the Audit Commission. Their qualification letter extrapolated financial errors found in the claim to calculate that there was potential for the subsidy claim to be overstated by £2.1m. The DWP has since written to the City Council requiring a response to the qualification letter...Additional work has been undertaken to challenge the calculation of the potential impact of the errors that could reduce the adjustment of subsidy to £0.430m, subject to agreement by the DWP. In summary the City Council is challenging some of the statistical extrapolation calculations used to derive the final figure. "

So, perhaps NCC isn't really that upset about the loss of the Audit Commission after all. And their smiles no doubt widened when the alternative of allowing councils to appoint their own private sector auditors was announced.

You see, NCC is known for sending quite a lot of business to private sector consultants, spending nearly 9% of all staffing costs on them. Now, clearly some of this is spent on the Harold Tinworths and Bill Trattles types, one-man-band former local government bods who set up in business with what are essentially a series of temporary jobs. However, it also includes big firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers who NCC has a long and cosy relationship with. Well, as luck would have it, PwC can provide accountancy services as well!

Now lets imagine a scenario where PwC as auditors are charged with assessing the VFM of a decision to outsource a service or award a contract to PwC, you're not going to get an entirely independent viewpoint are you? What you probably will get is the answer you want and have paid to hear. That will be right up JoCo and the gang's street.

Another issue that bodes badly for us the taxpayer is that these big accountancy/outsourcing firms don't exactly have sparkling records of brilliance in the projects they have undertaken, a lack of talent they will probably bring to public sector auditing.

So incompetence and an in-built conflict of interest. Just what councils need.

In a related matter, have a read of this article by Johann Hari in the Indy on the pernicious effect of management consultants on the organisations they prey on.

(Post updated with links 21/8/10)

Nottingham City Council Guilty of Benefit Fraud?

Perhaps not, technically, as they (probably) didn't do it deliberately* and to be prosecuted for fraud there needs to be some intent as far as I know. But anyway, what actually happened?

Again, I missed the opportunity of scooping the 'Post'. On Saturday they reported on the Audit Commission's findings that NCC had messed up its claims to central government for Housing Benefit subsidy in 2008/9 and as a result had been paid £2m more than it was entitled to.

You see, councils are only responsible for administering Housing Benefits on behalf of the Dept for Work and Pensions, the actual money is paid back to them by central government, rather than it actually coming from local taxes.

Anyway, I did some digging around and found that the Audit Commission's report had been put before the council's Audit Committee meeting on 28 May, so had been available online for a few weeks but, as usual, I missed it. It will be interesting to see the minutes of that meeting when they come out. But what is clear is that Lisa Black has fucked it up again.

The specific issues that the Commission reported on were -

• incorrect application of start dates for benefit claims. I have to say this happened to me when I first claimed Council Tax Benefit.
• incorrect assessment of Tax Credits' effect on claims
• level of errors much higher than 20078
• high level of errors means more audidt activity required with resultant costs implications (and this DOES come out of our Council Tax, boys and girls)
• no quality control activity in 2008/9 being the likely cause of errors
• no quality control activity in 2009/10 means likely to be similar level of error in that year

These last two points deserve some further analysis. Firstly, and quite alarmingly, NCC's excuse for the lack of any quality control was that the people who would normally do this were engaged in training staff in 'New Systems Thinking'. This is very much the baby of my old muckers Helen Spencer (Shipway as was) and Lisa Black and means that the blame for this mess can be placed squarely with them. Secondly, I think the Commission's view that a similar level of errors will be found for 2009/10 is optimistic. In my experience, if there is no system of monitoring, as time goes on those operating the system tend to relax and not worry so much about errors because they're not going to be picked up, resulting in more errors. Such an approach is exacerbated if management are concentrating on speed rather than accuracy (more on this in a bit). This is simply human nature. I therefore predict a higher level of errors when the Commission comes to look at this next year.

It is also worth having a look into the context that these issues arise in. Last March I wrote about NCC's internal audit service finding that accuracy of claims was very poor, although part of the problem was that NCC was using external service providers for some of its claims processing. I also wrote about the publicly available performance data and its relationship to the now defunct Comprehensive Performance Assessment. I found that, while NCC was getting consistently high ratings for speed of processing it was actually the worst council in the East Midlands for its record of accuracy. What was that I said about management prioritising speed over accuracy? I should also point out that those figures are from 2007/8 i.e. before they stopped quality control in favour of training in 'New Systems Thinking'.

So, in a nutshell, Lisa Black decided to halt quality control in order to carry out training in managementspeak, despite the fact that there were warnings aplenty of the service's already appalling record on accuracy. As a result, the council is likely to have to repay £2m in subsidy that it shouldn't have received (likely? ConDem government, Labour council. I reckon it's a dead cert). Why is this woman still in her job?

Going back to the benefit fraud analogy, I remember that NCC was very proud to have found £33k of benefit fraud by claimants in a year and keen to point out that there was 'no hiding place'. And yet the Audit Commission finds NCC wrongly claiming over £2m! Lock 'em all up I say.

*It's worth pointing out that a benefit claimant can be prosecuted for a criminal offence even if they had no intention to defraud but had simply failed to provide information in relation to their claim without reasonable excuse. You can bet any figures that this relates to will get lumped in with all the tabloid 'benefit fraudsters' figures you hear. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander I say.

The Bridge Estate

NCC has had a good old telling off by the District Auditor for its administration of the Bridge Estate, a registered charity which was established in antiquity to raise money for repairs to bridges across the Trent.

The accounts were so inadequate that the audit cost NCC (i.e. you and me) an extra £3.5k in fees to pay for work chasing stuff up. A more serious failing was somewhat tartly revealed in the DA's following comment on the 'public benefits statement' which is required by the Charity Commission but was initially left out -

"The public benefits statement subsequently added to the statements is very limited, particularly in view of the charity's transfer of £1.5m to the council."

Hmmm.

The Audit Committee acts as the trustees on behalf of NCC on a day to day basis, or rather they don't as that seems to be another complaint expressed by the DA. Doesn't bode well if the committee charged with ensuring NCC's financial propriety can't even draw up proper accounts or comply with Charity Commission guidelines.

NCC Annual Meeting

I just found the minutes to the council's annual meeting. That's not to to say that I'm claiming they were previously well hidden, simply that I hadn't really bothered to look.

Anyway I was interested to see the minute of the exchange between Tory Councillor Georgina Culley and Cap'n Collins over his alleged 'personal mentoring'. For more details on the background to this see here. Let's quote it in full -

"Councillor Culley asked the following question of the Leader of the Council:

Could the Leader of the Council explain the nature of the personal mentoring that he has received since 2005/06, and what value the public has received from the £111,000 spent to date?

Councillor Collins replied as follows:

Thank you Lord Mayor. As I have previously made clear in a question to Council on this matter, I have not received any personal mentoring. I cannot therefore comment on the nature or value of something I have not had."

Remember, these are the official minutes of the meeting and are therefore supposed to accurately report formal replies in full even if (and they often do) go on a bit.

Two issues strike me here. One, if that is all he said, it is a woefully inadequate answer to a question about over £111k public expenditure which nobody seems to be able to trace. Secondly, and possibly partially in Collins' defence, Charles Walker at the 'Post' seemed to hear him say quite a bit more. Shouldn't all that have gone into the minutes? (Update - see comments for an explanation of what actually happened)

I do note Collins reference to a previous reply to a question to Council and maybe the extra detail was given there and Walker or his sub-eds conflated the two for simplicity. I haven't been able to find any trace of this earlier question on the issue and I'll keep looking but if anybody else can enlighten me please do.

By the way, I received a message from the District Auditor telling me that she had been in Nottingham last Friday but hadn't been able to conclude her enquiries at that time. It does look like there is quite a bit to look into.

As to why this is an important issue, well there is of course the value for money question, what did we get for the cash? This appears to be the only aspect that the Tories were looking into (happy to correct this if one of them wants to get in contact). However, to me, a bigger issue is the lack of accountability behind the spending of this money on our behalf.

The fact is that Collins could have quite legitimately made a portfolio holder decision to employ a consultant to do whatever it was that Tinworth was doing (presuming it was within his remit, if not I'm sure he could have got the relevant portfolio holder to do it for him). This decision would have been published and we would have some idea of what was going on. He could also have quite legitimately formally decided not to go to an open tender because NCC's finance rules allow it to do that if the circumstances justify it. That would also be recorded on the portfolio decision. Essentially, two pieces of paper and a couple of signatures would have made it all above board.

The thing is, when the Leader of the Council doesn't follow those simple accountability measures, and over a hundred grand gets spent on somebody who Collins does appear to have history with (Tinworth was involved in trying to rescue the One City Partnership, the predecessor to 'One Nottingham' which Collins has been running as his personal fiefdom until very recently*) then we have the right to wonder if there is a bit of a stinky fish involved.

Anyway, moving on. I was interested to see that both opposition parties tabled some fairly detailed amendments to the budget. With the current political make-up of NCC their amendments had no chance of being passed so you might wonder why they bother. I for one am glad that they did. If nothing else it gives us some insight into their parties' thinking on the issues (e.g. both seem to want to see expenditure on the Arrow reduced and the Lib Dems also suggested ending the ridiculous 'Proud' campaign, the use of Executive Assistants and to scrap the Viccy Centre 'rebuild') and at least keeps alive the impression of democracy happening. Must be a thankless task drafting those amendments for what may be essentially a symbolic gesture but again, I'm glad that they do.

Lastly, there were a large number of questions from the public about the Radford Unity Complex debacle, to which Collins provided the response. He mentions the 'unprecedented' Call-in Sub-commmittee meeting held just four days before but this time doesn't repeat his (subsequently revealed to be false) claim that selling it would raise £320k. In fact, a buyer had been offered it last Autumn for less than half that. It's difficult to see how Collins couldn't have known about that and why he failed to include it in his response. The Audit Commission were keen to look into until the sale fell through which I reckon Collins can count as a lucky escape.

All in all, it's worth reading and comparing the not entirely identical stories he gave to the sub-committee and full council, especially in light of how it all fell apart when the dodgier bits of the deal found their way into the public domain.

*Of course, it's likely that he will continue running One Nottingham as his personal fiefdom via a proxy.

Harold Tinworth - An Update

Had a further response to my FoIA request about the decision to commission services from Harold Tinworth's company 'Regional and Local Associates'.

As you can see, NCC are saying that they have no further info regarding the decision to spend over £25k pa on a consultant to provide unspecified services. That's not good.

Apparently the Audit Commission is investigating this one and I'll hopefully be able to update you further on that fairly soon.

Audit Commission Looking into Radford Unity Complex Sale

Just heard that the Audit Commission is aware of the RUC issue and is looking into some aspects of it.

The organisation's remit is financial irregularity and efficiency so they will only be looking into the sale below market value aspect and possibly the need to pay rent for community groups that has arisen due to the incorrect notice. As such it probably won't be much direct help for the tenants themselves.

But unless JoCo's got a very good explanation for his behaviour I suspect his star will fade considerably. And it's a lot of baggage to be carrying into a PPC selection process.

Housing Benefits Still Shit

Things aren't going so well for Lisa Black. Not only did she make a complete twat of herself at my employment tribunal last year she is also failing to lead the Housing Benefits service out of its inability to get its sums right.

Last February I wrote about how NCC had the worst accuracy scores for Housing Benefits processing in the whole of the East Midlands.

That concerned figures for 2007. Now the Audit Commission has stated that things are getting worse, saying in a progress report to the Council's Audit Committee -

"We found a higher number of errors in the processing of individual claims than in
previous years, although the overall effect on the amount of subsidy due to the Council
was small. We will be discussing with officers why the number of errors in our samples
has increased."

The thing is, NCC's internal audit service reported on Housing Benefits' chronic inaccuracy record to the Audit Committee last February, as I wrote about here.

And yet the Audit Committee seems to have been satisfied with a glib assurance that -

"...quality control errors in individual benefit claims’ processing, highlighted during the audit, were being addressed through joint working between officers and the Audit Commission..."

Surely somebody high up should be taking responsibility for this?

Nottingham City Council in 'Dodgy Communiations' Shock....Again

The Evening Post has reported that NCC has been criticised over it's communications, in particular the Stalinist banners that get hung up all round the Market Square.

The District Auditor said that the ones hung up on the Council House earlier this year saying "2 stars, Improving well" were "borderline legal". Cllr Chapman interprets this meaning that the DA "...is happy with the current initiative". My bullshitometer has just exploded.

Before this latest incident came up I had been thinking of writing about the previous two incidents in 2005 and 2007 when NCC had been told off for having dodgy banners about the place, however it didn't seem very current and I put my rather limited energies into more recent matters.

As one of NCC's 'Statements of Internal Control' notes, the Audit Commission had issued statutory recommendations regarding unlawful publicity materials issued in 1999/2000. Later criticisms of banner campaigns during early 2007 (the notorious 'Proud' and 'Ambitious' campaigns), a mere three months before the local elections led the AC to conclude that the statutory recommendations had not been complied with, leading to NCC introducing further action. In March this, the 'Standards Committee' further discussed publicity issues when it considered NCC's response to proposed changes to the Code of Practice on local government publicity.

So why do they keep getting caught out? The issue has been discussed to death and it's not as if publicity is short of resources. It has a budget of about £2.7m pa and its own senior officer at Director level.

Frankly, if all the Audit Commission is ever going to do is write a stiff letter it's hardly surprising if councillors play fast and loose with the law. JoCo and his mates are hardly known for their reticence and the opposition on the council is just too small (and in the case of the Tories too useless, at least the Lib Dems do at least make an effort to challenge things, it was them who complained about the recent publicity issue). The Commission needs to hold senior councillors to account on this issue. In 2007, after one of the earlier incidents, Nottingham seriously bucked the political trend in the local elections, returning an increased Labour majority. Coincidence? I don't think so, these things have an effect.

However, I can't help wondering if that Director, Stephen Barker (we've had fun with him on here before) is also a big part of the problem. He is known to be close to JoCo and the inner circle and also appears to be close to the Sheriff, accompanying him on his recent US junket chasing Robin Hood. Such personal closeness to the politics may result in his judgment being impaired in terms of the political neutrality of the communications initiatives that he is in charge of. It is part of the role of senior management to provide advice on such issues.

Mea Culpa

Ok, who else apart from me and the Evening Post didn't bother to read the whole Audit Commission re-inspection report on Nottingham City Homes because we fell for all the PR hype about everything being rosy now?

Have a look at para 131 to 133 in the above link. The number of tenants who received Notices Seeking Possession was running at over 27% through 2008. Thats horrendous. Actual evictions were running at around 1% through out the same period although there was a small reduction, that works out to around 300 people per year.

The report says that liaison with Housing Benefits is good and that 'money advice is readily available' via a link up with St Anns Advice Centre. Not sure how much good the latter is to someone in the Meadows, lets hope NCH remember their 'other advice services may be available' disclaimer. Needless to say, there's no mention of Discretionary Housing Payments being an option to help prevent rent arrears, but then Housing Benefits seem to regard their existence as a trade secret.

So back to this trigger happy approach to sending out NSPs. There might be a clue in a report to NCC's Debt Recovery Task and Finsh Panel from July 2006. Here's a quote from early in the report;

"Nottingham’s Corporate Debt Policy states that ‘it is assumed that all individuals (…..) are won’t payers until they are identified as can’t payers.’ This should be reversed and all appropriate needs assessed and referrals made for debt advice early on. "

This was after NCH was set up. Do you think some of this 'won't pay' attitude remained behind at NCH?

I've got to admit, I still haven't read the whole report, if I find anything else in it I'll stick it up here.

Housing Benefits and the Comprehensive Performance Assessment

I'm going to introduce you to some new jargon, the 'Comprehensive Performance Assessment' (CPA). Broadly speaking its (allegedly) an overall assessment of a council's performance collated by the Audit Commission (AC). Not all individual services are directly inspected by AC but its them who get the job of pulling the whole lot together for the overall report. Once you've read this post you can afford to completely erase CPAs from your memory cos they're old hat baby, there's a new gun in town, the Comprehensive Area Assessment (before you ask I don't really know whats different but I'm sure its new and exciting and full of the stuff that gets auditors creaming their pants. I could look into it but I don't need to for this article and its probably too boring).

Housing and Council Tax benefits services were previously inspected by a body called the Benefits Fraud Inspectorate (other titles considered - Scourge of Scroungers, Witchfynder General) but this was abolished in April 2008 and benefits are now one of the services inspected by AC directly. However the most recent CPA published drew on the 2007 inspection by BFI. In this assessment, Nottingham City Council's benefits service scored 4, the highest rating.

So, NCC's benefits services are brilliant then? Well, they are better than they were but if we take a look underneath the hood its not quite so rosy.

I contacted the AC and they sent me details of the methodology behind the 2008 CPA and they confirmed that this was broadly the same as that used by the BFI in 2007. Scroll down to page 17 for the stuff on the detailed benefits assessment.

One thing thats immediately clear is that two of my pet issues, the illegal decision notices and the huge underspend of the Discretionary Housing Payment budget play no part in the assessment. To be fair, I'm not surprised that the former doesn't make it in, its not easy to see how such an issue could be easily assessed in audit terms and as decision letters are usually standard templates from a specialist software package AC could be forgiven for assuming that getting them legally correct is a given. However, I find it pretty alarming that DHPs are completely ignored.

Another thing that is apparent from the document is that different 'performance measures' are given different weightings in percentage terms in the overall assessment of the service.

Lets have a look at two of them which I don't think would be controversial to describe as 'very important'. One, the average speed of processing new claims deserves a 15% weighting in the assessment, while the percentage of claims that are calculated correctly is only worth 6%.

WTF? Why so different? Don't get me wrong, speed of processing is important but so is accuracy. More worryingly, as there is a bit of a conflict between the two (the age old quantity v quality battle), giving one a much higher weighting might tempt managers to throw all their resources at one at the expense of the other in order to get a better inspection score.

But this is Nottingham City Council, they've got a 4 star assessment, the best there is, surely they wouldn't be that cynical? A quick look at the figures should clear this up....oh.

The performance figures are available on the Department of Work and Pensions website (this is an MS Excel file so if you haven't got Excel you can get a free viewer here). Scroll down a bit to find the Government Office East Midlands bit, Nottingham's at row 120.

Nottingham's average claim processing time for 2007/8 was 28 days, enough to get it a rating of 4 (the highest) for this performance measure which, lets remind ourselves is weighted at 15% of the overall assessment. Trebles all round for that. Now, scroll across for the performance measure for claims calculated correctly and Nottingham achieved 93% which gives it a big fat 1 (the lowest). Look at the other councils and this is in fact the worst score for accuracy in the whole of the East Midlands. Still, never mind eh, that one's only worth 6% of the overall rating so fucking up on that doesn't matter too much. Can you see where this is going?

So, to summarise, NCC has allowed itself to continue issuing illegal decision notices for over 9 months and has comprehensively mismanaged the Discretionary Housing Payment scheme every year since its inception. Neither of these affect its CPA score. It has also, I think its fair to infer, thrown resources at a performance measure that has a very large effect on its CPA score while allowing another (low weighted) measure to fall so low that it is the worst scoring in the whole region. This is tick box management at its worst.

The Audit Commission are due to release the report for the 2008 CPA for NCC this month and, although they have taken over the inspection the methodology remains the same. They tell me that a new approach is due for the 2009 inspection which will appear next year (summarised here for those who are still awake).

So we can look forward to another round of nauseatingly self congratulatory press releases about our 'excellent' benefits service any day now probably (especially after the bigging up of NCH's not outstanding 2 star assessment recently). Unfortunately, what we probably can't look forward to is your benefit being calculated correctly, claimants being told that they can appeal against the incorrect assessment or for their Discretionary Housing Payments claim being administered properly. Keep an eye on those eviction rates.

Link to Audit Commission Report

The report is now actually available to download here. I think you can also get it via the link to NCC's response. Must have come up while I was having a nap this afternoon.

Not read it yet.