Guidance

HB Direct issue 181: February 2018

Updated 4 September 2018

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Editorial

It is hard to believe that it’s February already. I expect you will all be gearing up for next year, developing your business plans for 2018-19, as we are. My priorities are to make sure we continue to support the effective delivery of Housing Benefit (HB) for our millions of claimants and we continue to focus on reducing fraud and error.

Despite the demands of Welfare Reform and funding pressures, you continue to maintain speed of processing performance. Statistics for Quarter 2 2017-18 published on 31 January 2017 show an average speed of processing of 22 days for new claims and 9 days for changes of circumstances, the same as in Q2 2016/17. Whilst fraud and error statistics still point to a growth in fraud and error, this is being driven substantially by the increasing complexity of the HB caseload with far more claimants in work; many of these with variable earnings. Thanks to initiatives like Real Time Information (RTI) fraud and error in the working age employed group has not been increasing. Data from subsidy returns and on debt also show you are finding increasing amounts of fraud and error. We will be writing to you soon to let you know arrangements for the continuation of funding to keep earnings right; having secured additional money for the next three years in the Autumn Budget.

We also secured funding to develop a strategic debt tracing solution. You can see in this month’s edition of HB Direct that the tactical service we hoped to launch last year is currently being tested and is showing a good deal of promise. Whilst all public services are having to cut costs, the potential to increase recoveries from people in work should provide a substantial boost to your revenues.

On money issues, we are aiming to get the local authority (LA) funding schedule out soon which will show the majority of funding streams for next year including confirmed funding for administrative subsidy, Universal Support and New Burdens. We are still working with the LA Associations to impact the measures in the Budget to provide transitional housing costs for Universal Credit new claimants and the removal of Temporary Accommodation but we will let you know what the New Burdens funding will be as soon as we can to help you plan.

Finally, I would like to thank all of you for your support and patience whilst we are implementing new initiatives such as the Employee Authentication Service replacement and Verify Earnings and Pensions (previously known as the Wider use of RTI). I appreciate these can cause disruption but we will continue to endeavour to keep this to a minimum.

Clare Elliott
Head of Housing Delivery Division
Send distribution and newsletter enquiries to:
[email protected]

Closure of mailbox

The Housing Benefit (HB) mailbox which you may have been using to contact the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) for policy advice on recovery of HB will be closed within the next 2 months and all queries should now be sent to: [email protected]

Real Time Information for HB Overpayment Recovery

We are writing to update you on progress of the HB Debt Service project. The project will provide local authorities (LAs) the opportunity to match outstanding HB debtors to Real Time Information on HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) employment and pension data.

We recently ran a second pilot (extended Private Beta) working with 40 LAs and, once again, the results are very encouraging. These LAs sent us 11,300 records relating to debts raised in 2013-14. No recovery was taking place on any of the 11,300 cases. Of the cases matched, 65% were returned to the authorities with up-to-date employed or self-employed income information (an increase from the first Private Beta), suggesting a voluntary repayment or Direct Earnings Attachment (DEA) could be made.

The highest earner was paid £14,500 the previous month and £180,000 year to date. 26 cases were returned with earnings of over £40,000 year to date. Analysis suggests that in total 40% of the cases referred earn over the threshold for applying a DEA.

In addition, all of the cases matched (94%) provided an up-to-date address for the debtor and, in many cases, this was new information that the authority had not been able to obtain elsewhere.

We once again thank those LAs involved in the extended Private Beta and the wider networks of LA recovery experts who continue to provide their time and expertise in order to support the project.

A Working Group and Glasscubes space has been established comprising of the LAs involved in the Private Betas and this will be expanded to include all authorities over the coming weeks. Additional functionality is being developed for the Data Hub and this will be tested prior to Go-Live/Public Beta.

We intend to go live with the new service from April 2018, when all LAs will have the option of referring cases to be matched against HMRC employment and pension data. We do not propose to undertake any further live testing of cases before go live.

We’ll keep updating you through HB Direct, the Working Group, email and Glasscubes. But, if you have queries in the meantime, please write to: [email protected]

General Data Protection Regulation is coming

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is new data protection legislation starting from 25 May 2018. It will be stronger than the current legislation and demands more of organisations in terms of accountability for their use of personal data and enhances the existing rights of individuals. It applies to all personal data, so includes staff and employer data as well as customer, claimant and client data.

One of the main changes GDPR introduces is that, not only does an organisation have to comply, it must be able to demonstrate compliance. This means that more information about what we do with personal data will have to be published.

The Information Commissioner’s Office will provide guidance and regulatory oversight. LAs should already be planning for the implementation of GDPR by 25 May 2018. Right now it’s expected that your internal conversations should have started; recognising the data that LAs hold in benefit systems, document management systems, etc. As some of that data is transferred from DWP on behalf of DWP/HMRC, we expect LAs to comply with the GDPR as well.

DWP has set up the GDPR Programme to commission and coordinate the work to make DWP compliant and in Housing Delivery we are currently looking at how to help LAs to ensure they are compliant both from a GDPR and DWP perspective.

We will start to publish information on a more regular basis. Having done an initial impact assessment, it is proposed to gain assurance around this data by enhancing the existing Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). That said, we have to demonstrate compliance so it is essential that LAs demonstrate compliance through signing up to the MOU and Code of Compliance we have introduced this year.

We still have approximately 100 MOUs outstanding from 2017-18 and we will shortly begin the work to revise the 2018-19 MOU. The hard work to reflect Public Services Network changes has been achieved this year with good input from LAs but we must aim to get 100% sign-off and ask that those LAs who have not signed it off this year do so as soon as possible. It is even more important that we achieve full sign-off under GDPR.

Watch this space for further information via Glasscubes and our regular publications (HB Direct newsletters and General Information Bulletins) in the near future.

If you have any queries regarding the content of this article or any other security and/or compliance questions you can email: [email protected]

Reminder: The LA Insight Survey starts soon

In December’s HB Direct issue 180 we advised you that the next survey was due to start in early January 2018. To ensure the final survey is fit for purpose we carried out a small pilot in December 2017. As a result the survey is slightly delayed and will begin this month (February 2018).

Our research contractors NatCen will be sending an email survey to Revenues and Benefits managers. So, if managers have not received an email by mid February please contact: Catherine Flynn on: 0113 251 9047 or at: [email protected]

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

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

Revenues and Benefits managers will be asked to collate responses from other colleagues or organisations if they don’t have all the information needed to answer the questions themselves. So, if you’re not a Revenues and Benefits manager, you might be asked to answer some of the questions.

We really do appreciate your help with these surveys and would like to use this opportunity to thank everyone who took part in the pilot.

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