Guidance

HB Direct issue 183: April 2018

Updated 4 September 2018

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Editorial

We have moved into a new financial year and, as with all new beginnings, it feels appropriate to look back on the successes and challenges of 2017-18 as well as looking forward to what 2018-19 will bring.

I mentioned at the beginning of the last financial year that the environment we all work in is becoming tougher and it continues to be. How you demonstrate your continued commitment to delivering the right Housing Benefit (HB) at the right time is great testimony to that as performance is still holding strong. We appreciate the challenges you face around funding and Welfare Reform.

We had some fairly significant challenges arising from the November 2017 budget announcements including:

• Universal Credit (UC) live service closure
• Transition to UC Housing Payments
• removal of temporary accommodation from UC

All these impacted on you and continue to do so. As you deliver against these changes we are providing more guidance and New Burdens funding.

We continue to look at what we can do better and more efficiently to improve the customer experience and help reduce costs. As well as the one to one support we offer to all local authorities (LAs), we are also supporting our UC colleagues deliver training to LAs as they transition to UC full service.

Going forward, we will continue to work together on projects such as Verify Earning & Pensions and Employee Authentication Service both of which have more information within this bulletin. We will also be working on UC managed migration - moving the working age HB claim stock across to Universal Credit.

I am very proud to continue to lead HB delivery for the Department for Work and Pensions and look forward to meeting the challenges together this year.

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

Real Time Information for Housing Benefit Overpayment Recovery

The Housing Benefit Debt Service Project is ready for go-live on 12 April 2018. Is your authority ready?

Feedback from those local authorities (LAs) involved in testing has been excellent:

• we would not get the sort of success we’ve seen without access to this type of employment information
• the success we have had so far surpasses the work that we would ordinarily have been able to do without this data….the team have been very enthusiastic and are very motivated by the results they have achieved and continue to achieve
• all staff members who have been working with this data state they experience a high level of job satisfaction
• this service is the best thing to happen since the introduction of direct earnings attachments!

Each LA has nominated at least one Champion who has access to the Housing Benefit Debt service work space on Glasscubes. If, as a Champion, you have yet to log on to the work space, you need to do this immediately to enable access to project guidance, documentation and notifications.

We’ve held two ‘All LA Champion’ conference calls on 8 and 20 March 2018. The call on 8 March 2018 gave on an overview of the Housing Benefit Debt sService Project and provided an opportunity for a question and answer session with the project team. The call on 20 March 2018 focused on navigation of Glasscubes, use of the project templates and the guidance available to support users of the service.

Replay details are available for the call on 20 March 2018 as follows:

• Telephone Number – 020 8196 1998
• Access Code – 6731127#

The project would like to thank all Champions (701 covering all LAs) who have engaged both in the initial testing phases and with the development of project documentation and guidance.

If you would like any further information regarding this service please speak with your LA Champion, contact us via our Glasscubes workspace or email us at – [email protected]

Replacing the Employee Authentication Service

In the March issue of HB Direct 182 we told you about the working group we had set up, the 1,000 plus end-users we’d successfully migrated and about the next steps we were aiming to take.

Continuing Service user migration

We said we were aiming to start migrating Tell Us Once (TUO) service users. We’ve done that, and all together over 2,000 service users of the TUO Change Reporting System, Customer Information System and Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP) service have successfully migrated onto the new Employee Authentication Service (EAS).

Setting up the new EAS in your organisation

We also said we’d be inviting working group Champions to access the web service that will enable them to set up the administrative system within their LA. We’re doing that too.

We’ve already written again to working group Champions to remind them of the emails they’ll receive and screens they’ll see when linking their new authentication tokens to their temporary administrative account. We’ve written a mini rollout schedule for the 35 LAs involved in the working group (or Private Beta as we call it), because they are actually live on the EAS replacement.

Wider communications

We’re writing out to the remaining 90% of organisations outside the Private Beta working group to raise awareness about the Champion role and a job we need Champions to undertake before we can begin the administrative set up in their organisation.

As well as writing directly to Champions we’re copying heads of service, Champion nominators and Finance Directors. We are inviting all Champions to a new Glasscubes workspace and will make sure all communications are posted there too.

The project team welcome any questions about anything mentioned in this article. You can contact them by emailing – [email protected]

Reminder; Subsidy/Discretionary Housing Payments final claims deadline 30 April 2018

Subsidy claims

The deadline for LA submission of the 2017-18 HB initial final subsidy claim is 30 April 2018. All LAs should take appropriate action to ensure that this deadline is met. Usual subsidy withholding arrangements will apply for any LA which does not meet the deadline and extensions will be granted in exceptional circumstances only. The subsidy-related deadline for referral of cases to the Rent Officer is also 30 April 2018. The deadline for auditor-certified final subsidy claims is 30 November 2018.

Discretionary Housing Payments claims

The deadline for the submission of the 2017-18 Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) final claim is 30 April 2018. Again, LAs should take appropriate action to ensure that this deadline is met.

The deadline of 30 April 2018 for subsidy and DHP claims helps to ensure that wider governmental accounting arrangements are satisfied and HM Treasury requirements are met.

Any enquiries should be emailed to – [email protected]

LA Welfare Steering Group and Practictioners’ Operational Group

The last meeting of the LA Welfare Steering Group took place on 7 March 2018

Agenda items discussed included topics on:

• LA funding
• 2017 budget update
• Universal support
• HB Fraud, Error and Debt strategy
• the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) Feasibility Study – Impact of Welfare Reforms on Homelessness.

The last meeting of Practictioners’ Operational Group took place on 21 March 2018

Agenda items discussed included topics on:

• Department for Work and Pensions’ MHCLG supported housing policy
• temporary accommodation April changes
• Customer Journey
• New Burdens allocation methodology for the budget measures
• Single Fraud Investigation Issues Resolution

Summary minutes for these meetings will be on the www.gov.uk shortly.

If you have any questions regarding either of these DWP/LA consultation groups you can email the Secretariat at – [email protected]

Update: Verify Earnings and Pensions service Alerts

For 2018-19 a total of £25 million has been allocated to LAs to support the administration of the Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP) alerts and letters were issued on 3 April 2018 with details of individual LA funding allocations.

A total of £20 million will be paid as an upfront payment by the end of April 2018 and £5 million will be paid to LAs in Quarter 4 2018-19.

The second payment will be made to all LAs:

• who are actively engaged in the process
• have utilised the funding to enable capacity to administer the Alerts and Right Benefit Initiative (RTI) referrals in the intervening period
• completing the management information to record activity outcomes

Funding is to provide LAs with the capacity to process VEP Alerts and RTI referrals where LAs are awaiting the rollout of the service.

For the majority of LAs we are providing more funding than was previously paid for RTI Bulk Data Match (BDM) and Optional RTI. As such it is expected that the funding will enable LAs to maximise the resources currently in place for BDM and Optional RTI; enabling the retention and/or addition of these resources from April 2018.

Rollout of VEP alerts will commence from May 2018 and is planned to be delivered as follows:

• on a rolling basis with a defined maximum number of LAs in each tranche
• the number of LAs in each tranche will start low and steadily increase as the implementation activities are refined to take on board any Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from the earlier groups
• the first tranche ‘go-live’ is planned for 30 May 2018
• ahead of the VEP service Alerts rollout, the existing non-passported HB caseload will be bulk loaded and registered on to the VEP service – so that an interest in these cases is held in the VEP service and Alerts are issued to notify relevant income changes – no user intervention is required

The letter issued 3 April 2018 contains the rollout schedule.

Following the successful implementation of the VEP service and the feedback received in the Post Implementation Review, the same Business Readiness Approach will be operated as used to rollout the VEP User Interface onto users’ desktops. This will include continuing to work with named individuals in each LA.

The key features of the Business Readiness Approach will be to provide support through conference calls, talking through any guidance materials, before issuing these for reference and for use in any further learning required for your staff. The reference material will include guidance on the VEP Alerts and FAQs.

Please look out for information coming your way.

DHP monitoring returns 2017-18 for England and Wales

We would like to provide advance notice that later this month we will be providing English and Welsh LAs with details of the arrangements for the year end voluntary monitoring return for DHP expenditure. These returns improve our understanding of how DHPs are being used to help Housing Benefit and claimants with housing element of UC affected by various Welfare Reform measures. The deadline for submission of the end of year monitoring return for 2017-18 will be Friday 11 May 2018.

A General Information Bulletin will be issued with the monitoring return spreadsheet later in the month.