Guidance

LA Welfare Direct 2/2020

Updated 11 December 2020

Contact

If you have queries about the:

• technical content of this bulletin then contact details are given at the end of each article

• general content and distribution of this bulletin, contact: [email protected]

Who should read

All Housing Benefit staff.

Action

For information.

Editorial

Although we issued a LAWD lite in January, this February LAWD is the first main edition of 2020 and I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope everyone had the opportunity to recharge their batteries and enjoy the seasonal festivities; although for me this seems like a distant memory. Things show no sign of slowing down in 2020 which is evidenced by this bumper edition.

2020-21 provisional funding allocations were issued to each local authority (LA) on Friday 17 January. The Funding Schedules contained details of each individual LA’s HB Administration Subsidy and a range of new burden payments. We do aim to issue provisional allocations to LAs in December. However, this was an unprecedented year as the November budget was postponed and Parliament was dissolved during the run up to the General Election in December. I appreciate how important the provisional allocations are and how they feed into the LA fiscal planning and Council Tax setting process. I would like to thank LAs for being patient and the Department for Work and Pensions LA Funding Team for the immense amount of work it has taken to get these out to LAs as early as possible.

The overall Housing Benefit (HB) Administration allocation is the same as 2019-20 with a small reduction (£0.7million), to take account of the falling HB caseload caused by HB cases moving to UC. This does not necessarily mean that the HB Administration Subsidy at LA level has remained the same. This is the second year of a 3-year transition to a new allocation methodology which aligns funding more closely to HB caseload volumes and is, therefore, more equitable in its distribution. The impact of these transitional arrangements will therefore affect individual LA HB Administration Subsidy allocations.

We are planning to notify LAs of their Discretionary Housing Payments government contribution later this month and the Verify Earnings and Pensions allocations as soon as possible. We are also hoping to secure additional funding in the Spring Budget (11 March 2020) to enable LAs to undertake full case reviews on HB cases where there is a high risk of an unreported change of circumstances. We will provide more details if funding is secured in the Budget.

The LA Funding Team is currently delivering a series of regional HB subsidy workshops. We always receive excellent feedback from these events and the value of subsidy recovered from LAs as a result of subsidy error has significantly reduced over the years since we started holding them which has a direct positive impact on LA finances. We, in Housing Delivery Division (HDD), value the feedback we receive from LAs at these workshops as we did from the recent LA engagement workshops which is summarised in this edition.

You’ll see to follow an update on Pension Strategy Computer System uprating automation which went live in December 2019 for April 2020, along with a summary of the Ombudsman’s Focus on HB report which acknowledges that LAs are having to resource HB delivery longer than was previously anticipated. We continue to review and revise the estimated number of HB cases moving to Universal Credit (UC) and this has resulted in a much smaller UC reduction being applied to HB Administration subsidy for 2020-21 than was previously planned. We have also included the estimated volume of HB cases moving to UC on funding schedules this year to help LAs plan more effectively.

Adrian Shooter
Head of HDD LA/VOA Funding and Management Team

Housing Benefit Matching Service automation

1. In April 2019, Housing Delivery Division (HDD) ran an engagement exercise across all LAs to understand and gain a clear picture of how many LAs were using the automation process to upload their monthly Housing Benefit Matching Service (HBMS) file. The exercise found that the number of LAs taking advantage of the automation process was very small. The main reason identified being that many LAs did not know that the automation process was available or that it had been for a number of years.

2. HDD has continued to work with the IT suppliers over the last six months to refresh their guidance and to also support promotion of the process through their user groups. And new guidance on the process for all IT suppliers was published on Glasscubes in November 2019.

3. Using the automation process can significantly help reduce manual activity and, in turn, save resources. Therefore, we would encourage LAs not already taking advantage of this automation to familiarise yourself with the new guidance and to take action to implement the automation process going forward.

4. If you have questions, or need further advice or support, don’t hesitate to email [email protected]

Update: New HBMS rule

5. We advised in bulletin LAWD7/2019, that a new HBMS rule UCHB007 was in development and would be ready for release in August 2019.

6. Unfortunately, unforeseen issues impacted the development of the rule which meant we were unable to meet this release date.

7. We now plan to release the new rule week commencing 17 February 2020; and LAs will immediately start to receive any referrals they may have.

8. We expect the first release will total approximately 800 referrals across LAs, which will include current and historical cases. LAs will then receive any subsequent referrals each month thereafter.

9. If you have any queries regarding the content of this article you can email to [email protected]

Reducing your LA’s HB student income errors

10. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is conducting an ongoing programme of root cause analysis of the National Statistics that estimate the amount of fraud and error in HB. The most recent analysis has focused on student income errors (across all LAs) which are costing the taxpayer an estimated £40million a year.

Further investigation has identified two main reasons for these errors:

• LAs not asking a claimant if they are in receipt of funding and/or evidence of that funding when student status is declared
• LAs not implementing appropriate follow-up action for the next academic year

Action: Claimant declaration of student status

11. When a claimant declares student status, LAs should ask about any student funding at this point to establish if there is continued entitlement to HB. Evidence of any funding should be requested and, normal business as usual action taken if that evidence is not provided. Once received, the following good practice should be followed.

Good practice: Claimant declaration of student status and funding evidence provided

12. When a claimant declares student status and provides student funding evidence it is good practice to:

• ensure that an appropriate date is set to contact the claimant to establish evidence of the next academic year’s student funding (if not received within 13 months from their previous student funding award). This allows the claimant sufficient time to provide the evidence without request.
  – (Note: it is usual to set the case control date for either 12-months’ time, or at an appropriate date relevant to a likely change of student funding circumstances).
• if this evidence is not received by the date set, LAs should take normal business as usual action for evidence not provided.

Data Matching Tool guide

13. We also encourage LAs to use the Data Matching Tool (DMT) guide on Glasscubes, which:

• brings together information about all the DMT available to LAs; providing LAs with more detail on each of the tools
• supports you with your monthly planning and work prioritisation using these tools

14. However, if you have any specific questions regarding the content of this article you can contact [email protected]

Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman: Focus on Housing Benefit report

15. On 9 January, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman published their Focus report: Housing Benefits. The report highlights that last year the Ombudsman upheld 78% of all the HB complaints they investigated. This is compared with an uphold rate of 58% for all complaints.

16. Some common issues seen by the Ombudsman include councils preventing families from appealing decisions about their HB entitlement and recovering overpaid money before appeals have been considered. The report also finds that councils still need to properly resourced and deliver HB for longer than they may have thought; given Universal Credit (UC) is not being fully rolled out as quickly as first planned.

17. The report shares good practice and learning points from Ombudsman investigations to help improve the quality of council services more widely. These learning points are important because errors can lead to rising rent arrears and potential homelessness. More information can be found in the report.

18. If the findings in the report resonate with you, HDD’s Performance Development Team (PDT) offers a free to LA consultancy service to help with debt recovery activities and other areas of HB delivery. You can contact them at [email protected] if you would like to discuss what support they offer.

Performance Measurement review process

19. DWP’s Performance Measurement (PM) Team provides source data for the publication of National Statistics estimates in the level of HB fraud and error in the benefit system. As part of the PM process each LA is visited at least once a year by the team to conduct a review on a randomly selected number of cases.

20. The PM team examine the data held on HB systems for each case selected to ascertain accuracy of the HB award and visit the claimant to complete a review form. The PM team does not have direct access to LA HB systems so a digital information exchange solution (transfer of prints by email) between the PM team and LAs was agreed by the Practitioners’ Operational Group and implemented in October 2016.

21. DWP continue to work with partners to enhance and replace the digital exchange process. However, until a safe solution can be found, the process put in place from Oct 2016 remains as follows:

• PM Visiting team managers contact their LA counterparts 6 to 8 weeks prior to the commencement of visits within their respective areas to arrange a suitable date to undertake a profile meeting. At this meeting the team will provide LA managers with the number of cases selected for review and full details of the lower level process for the transfer of data (prints) by email. Each LA will have a nominated PM single point of contact to provide support. There is no need to contact the PM Visiting team managers in advance as each LA will be contacted in turn as their position in the HB measurement programme comes around.

22. It is imperative that the transfer of the prints by email is conducted accurately and within agreed timelines as cases selected for review which do not have prints to support the HB award may be categorised as incorrect. This, in turn, would lead to misleading levels of HB fraud and error reported in the National Statistics publication.

23. If you have any general questions regarding the content of this article you can email [email protected]

Update: Pension Strategy Computer System uprating solution

24. As mentioned in previous communications, DWP is responsible for sharing data with LAs on an annual basis where the DWP Pension Strategy Computer System (PSCS) hosted benefits (for example State Retirement Pension) have been uprated.

25. However, in previous year’s, attempts to automate the process (in other words, provide via ATLAS (Automated Transfer to LA Systems) have failed due to the size of the data transferred.

26. HDD’s LA Data Sharing (LADS) Delivery Team has been working with your LA IT software suppliers and has developed a solution to automate the process from December 2019 in time for April 2020 uprating activity using Application Programming Interface (API) calls to obtain the uprated benefit information.

27. The LA software suppliers and early adopter LAs have undertaken rigorous testing of the single and bulk API uprating which has been completed successfully and signed-off.

28. However, the testing has identified the following for DWP and LAs to address:

• in some cases, where customers have migrated to State Pension from a legacy benefit, the previous benefit has not always been ended on Searchlight. Although the previous benefit is not in payment the PSCS uprating API call is showing data for both benefits. We have raised this issue with the Customer Information System team to identify what action they can take to rectify this and the timescales. The early adopter LAs have dealt with these manually and for this year’s uprating we have advised all LAs that this is a known problem that DWP are looking into and for LAs to take the necessary action to disregard the previous benefit.
• some State Pension cases have not been uprated due to negative adjustments. DWP Pensions team will be manually uprating these cases in time for 2020 uprating.
• rejections as a result of mismatches of data, such as Date of Birth, name, etc. LAs will be required to address these inaccuracies and bring their systems up to date. Testing identified that it is good practice for LAs to undertake a data cleansing exercise using the Personal Details Verification Report (included in the monthly Housing Benefit Matching Service report) before undertaking PSCS bulk uprating to try and reduce the number of mismatches. Although this activity will help cleanse the data LAs hold they may still get mismatched records on this year’s PSCS uprating data. However, this will be reduced next year due to the corrective activity they take to address the mismatches this year

29. Strong positive feedback from those testing the solution, means we anticipate LA staff will view this change in a positive manner; as providing access to accurate PSCS uprating amounts to the LAs will ensure over and under payments do not occur or are limited. In addition, it will remove the requirement for authorities to manually uprate when conducting yearly reviews of claimant’s HB and Council Tax Reduction claims.

30. If you require any further information, do not hesitate to contact us via the LADS Inbox [email protected]

Check Employment Information

31. LAs are currently using a tactical solution to check employment records to enable recovery of HB debt via the Housing Benefit Debt Service. DWP is pleased to announce that we are working together with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to bring LAs a strategic solution (Check Employment Information) during 2020. A joint DWP/HMRC project team has been set up and an inception meeting was held on 21 January 2020, where we agreed how we would work together and outlined a technical solution. Work will now continue at pace and we will provide a more detailed update in March 2020 on how we will work with authorities and the timeframes involved.

Collection of Internet Protocol address data for HB claimants

32. DWP routinely collects Internet Protocol (IP) address data when new claims are made online for DWP benefits, such as UC and Carers Allowance, but currently not for HB. The collection of IP address data is a fraud prevention measure in order to detect multiple claims from a single address or from abroad.

33. Some analysis of benefits where IP address data is collected was undertaken. This helped establish the scale of fraudulently made claims and the significant savings that can be made on cases identified.

34. As a result, HDD is currently progressing the capture of IP address data when a new claim or change of circumstance is submitted online by HB claimants. We have been engaging with LA software suppliers and online claim providers to understand the work involved to achieve this.

35. We can confirm that work is now underway to make the necessary IT amendments and collect IP address data for both new claims and changes via the Single Housing Benefit Extract returns from April 2020.

36. Further updates will be provided as the work progresses.

37. If you have any questions about this project you can email [email protected]

Update: Payment Deduction Programme review

38. PDT has completed an end-to-end review of the Payment Deduction Programme (PDP) operations to ensure compliance by LAs and DWP in relation to HB debt.

39. The scope was to look at how the following functionality was working:

• LAs referring outstanding HB debt (referrals) - ensuring that LAs are fully compliant with guidance set out in circular HB A6/2016
• LA notifications of revised debt balance to Debt Management (DM) (revisions)
• the recall of debts by the LAs (recalls)
• the return of debts by DM to LAs where appropriate (cessations)
• automated issue of the payment schedule of HB debt deductions from DM to LAs.

40. We initially undertook a proof of concept with three LAs and, following evaluation of this, we engaged with an additional 18 LAs. A total of 301 cases were sampled from those 21 LAs. We subsequently carried out additional work delving deeper into some of the emerging issues.

41. We found that processes have not always worked as well as they could and sometimes there has been non-compliance with processes.

42. PDT and DM are currently working with three LAs to further test the receipt of PDP referrals through Transfer Your Files (TYF). We aim to confirm that TYF has greatly reduced the likelihood of referrals failing to reach DM. The LAs will also match data provided from DM records to their own records and any discrepancies will be recorded. DM can then assess the impact of any work required by them to resolve discrepancies.

43. PDT and DM will jointly present findings to the Practitioners’ Operational Group on 20 February 2020. Following this they will publicise a summary of key findings.

44. Some issues have now been resolved but it is worth noting that DM is extremely stretched at present due to a number of wider issues that have impacted on them. So, unfortunately, we need to ask for your continued patience in terms of implementing resolutions.

45. We would also like to take this opportunity to thank those LAs supporting us with this important piece of work.

Update: 2020-21 Discretionary Housing Payments government contribution for English and Welsh LAs

46. Routinely, as part of the allocation process, we consult with the DWP/LA consultation groups. The Discretionary Housing Payment (DHP) 2020-21 government contribution consultation exercise commenced on 7 January and closed on 24 January 2020.

47. Following this consultation, Ministers will take a final decision on the DHP allocations. So, we anticipate to be able to publish the finalised allocations in February 2020.

2020-21 Verify Earnings and Pensions LA funding

48. HDD are progressing through the various governance requirements to finalise the 2020-21 Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP) LA funding and plan to inform LAs of their individual funding amounts in March 2020 (or earlier if possible). We will then issue a Subsidy circular confirming allocations and make payments in early April 2020.

49. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support actioning VEP Alerts.

50. If you have any questions regarding this article you can email [email protected]

Post DWP/LA engagement events feedback and analysis

51. Bulletin LAWD12/2019 advised that we were reviewing all the suggestions/issues raised during the LA/DWP engagement events held in the Autumn. We are now in a position to provide some post events evaluation analysis along with some initial feedback:

• HDD facilitated 14 events which were attended by 348 people (236 from LAs and 112 from DWP Partnership Teams). An electronic evaluation questionnaire was issued to all attendees with a 39% return rate.
• 87% of attendees rated the overall event positively, with 13% rating an event as average or poor.

• a small number of attendees rated these venues as poor:

  – Leeds Southern House
  – Leeds Quarry House
  – Birmingham Five Ways

So, when organising future events, we will try to find alternative locations.

• 88% of attendees rated the organisation of the overall event positively but attendees would have liked to have seen an agenda in advance. As there was some political uncertainty around the time the events were held, HDD took a decision not share a copy of the agenda or slides in advance. However, an agenda will be issued ahead of any future events
• the sessions below received a high positive rating of either Good, Very Good or Excellent

HDD aims/objectives	Housing policy	HB Data Share	UC developments	Fraud, Error and Debt	HB funding	Move to UC
89%	86%	86%	86%	83%	82%	75%

LA suggestions/issues raised

52. HDD and the UC Programme gained some really valuable feedback from these events and we would like to thank those who raised specific suggestions/issue.

53. It is clear that LAs and DWP Partnership Teams are working collaboratively to support our claimants and are striving to ensure UC and other Welfare Reforms are implemented and claimants’ needs are met during a continuing period of significant change. However, as a result of LA suggestions/issues raised, we do recognise there are concerns with specific areas of both HB and UC. We are now looking at what actions we can take to address those concerns, which fall into the following broad themes:

• fraud and error
• supported/temporary accommodation
• data sharing
• UC Housing costs

54. More detail on these and our responses will be provided as a slide deck later in February 2020 and issued to all LAs and DWP Partnership Managers.

Pension Credit campaign launch

55. DWP will be launching an external campaign on 10 February 2020 that encourages couples and individuals over State Pension age to check whether they’re eligible for Pension Credit. Pension Credit provides help to people on low incomes and could give them access to assistance with housing costs, council tax and heating bills.

56. The campaign includes a short animated video that will be shown in GP waiting rooms, Post Offices and Facebook users over State Pension age.

57. If you work with customers over State Pension age, or who may be supporting someone who is, or know people who might be eligible, then please encourage them to find out more. You can find more information about Pension Credit on www.gov.uk, including a simple calculator to help check eligibility.

HB Cases with the Upper Tribunal

HB decisions by the Upper Tribunal

58. Decision Making and Appeals (DMA) Leeds is aware of the following HB cases that have been decided by the Upper Tribunal (UT):

• CH/1637/18 – Remitted - Any overpayment is recoverable unless it arose in consequence of an official error (and if the individual could not have reasonably be expected to know that it was an overpayment), Reg 100

• first-tier Tribunal (FtT) made a material error of law which lead the judge to reach findings about the appellant’s credibility and what he did or did not know about what he should tell the HB Office

• CH-307-18 - Remitted - FtT did not offer an adjournment to consider new evidence presented at the hearing. FtT also failed to investigate issue raised by the appellant in relation to the LA having the necessary information, but failed to act on it so that the cause of the overpayment was official error not the claimant’s non-disclosure

• CH/890/16, CH/821/16, CH/823/16, CH/834/16: These are linked cases with the following headings - Exempt accommodation, Claimant appeals dismissed, Procedural error immaterial.

• CH/2126/17: Removal of Spare Room Subsidy (RSRS) LA decision restored. Nelson followed.

• CH-2811-18 - FtT did not provide adequate reasons on whether to strike out a case for being brought out of time. Factors not considered that were relevant to the decision.

• CH-370-19 - Judge erred in law in the test applied when deciding if the appeal should be reinstated under rule 17(4) of the FTT Rules.

• CH/784/17: RSRS. LA decision restored. Nelson and Hockley followed.

• CH/2794/2018: Remitted - Overpayments of HB are recoverable if they fall within regulation 100. FtT did not apply the proper subjective test in deciding whether the claimant could reasonably have been expected to realise that she had been overpaid.

• CH/512/19 and CH/513/19: These are linked decisions with the following heading - Deprivation of capital. Tribunal failed to give sufficient consideration to the claimant’s evidence.

• CH–1889-17: Issue on whether the appellant had a ‘secondary’ or ‘contingent’ right to reside in the UK based on the right to reside her under school age son had as the ‘family member’ of his father, where the father at the relevant time (as is now effectively conceded) had a right to reside in the UK as a ‘worker’ but where the appellant was not a ‘family member’ of the father of her son. As a matter of law no such right of residence can arise under EU law. Essentially Directive 2004/38/EC, on which the appellant found her argument, only covers qualifying EU nationals and their family members as identified in that Directive. The Directive does not extend further from such family members to others who themselves are not qualifying EU nationals and who also are not themselves family members of the qualifying EU national.

• CH/730/19: Decision without reasons.

• CH/624/19: Second property occupied by former partner. Meaning of estrangement. People can have amicable relations and still be estranged.

• CH 3551/17: Remitted – FtT failed in the route it took to arrive at a conclusion that there had been no failure to disclose. FtT based its view upon its finding that he could not be reasonably expected to understand the obligation> However regulation 88 does not require an additional test as to whether or not disclosure was “reasonably to be expected”.

59. A selection of decisions of the UT are published on their website. Do be aware that there is an undefined time lapse between decisions being issued and their appearance on the website.

60. If you have any queries about cases before the UT Judges or courts, please contact us by email at [email protected]

HB cases awaiting decision by the Upper Tribunal

61. Decision Making and Appeals (DMA) Leeds have not been made aware of any new HB/CTB cases that are awaiting decision by the Upper Tribunal, since our previous LA Welfare Direct entry in August 2019.

New Legislation

62. The following Statutory Instrument (SI) has been laid:

• 2020 No. 101 The Pension Protection Fund and Occupational Pension Schemes (Levy Ceiling and Compensation Cap) Order 2020. Laid before Parliament on, 03 February 2020

63. Copies of SIs can now be downloaded from legislation.gov.uk

What’s new on our HB pages on www.gov.uk

64. The following items can be found on the website link shown:

Document Type	Subject	Link
LAWD12/2019	Editorial Update: Pension Strategy Computer System uprating Severe Disability Premium claimants in receipt of HB Urgent action for local authority IT teams - Imminent change of supplier of the Secure Network Boundary Service Reminder: Procurement of reporting accountants for the 2020-21 HB Assurance Process Update: LA/DWP engagement events Publication of Housing Benefit Speed of Processing Statistics LA Welfare Steering Group and Practitioners’ Operational Group HB decisions with the Upper Tribunal What’s new on our HB pages on www.gov.uk	LAWD12/2019
LAWDLite12/2019	Update: National Fraud Initiative action to take Disregard of payments: Grenfell Tower tragedy Disregard of payments: National Emergencies Trust Sharing of DWP customer data with wider LA services	LAWDLite12/2019
U1/2020	RR -v- The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions	U1/2020
A1/2020 (2nd Revision)	Housing Benefit: Uprating 2020-21	A1/2020 (2nd Revision)
A2/2020	War Pensions: Uprating 2020/21	A2/2020