Guidance

LA Welfare Direct 7/2020

Updated 11 December 2020

1. Editorial

When I last wrote the editorial for this bulletin, we were still into the response phase of our COVID-19 journey. Pretty much everything we were doing was new or different and being delivered at great pace.

An expression we hear a lot of these days is “the new normal”. I thought I would start by saying a bit more about what this has meant for my team in the Department for Work and Pensions.

For a start, a third of our people have been redeployed to work on Universal Credit (UC) claims. Many of these are our performance consultants, however, we have lost staff across the board. We are all working from home; even those working to process UC claims.

We are working harder than ever to keep in touch with people to provide support and to boost morale. And some of us are making too many trips to the fridge! I imagine you are all pretty much in the same position.

We are starting to think about the next phase of recovery and whether or not we can start to bring back some of the activities we have paused/stopped. We are developing a plan to help but the key thing to activating any plan is to understand what the landscape is now. Whatever we do, we will be reliant on the feedback we get from local authorities (LAs) on what is and isn’t possible.

This includes how we can support you in your own recovery activities when many of our staff are working elsewhere and face-to-face contact isn’t possible.

We continue to make calls to LAs to get a better picture of performance and resilience. We are continuing with our consultation forums; the Local Authority Welfare Steering Group and the Practitioners’ Operations Group. These are now done by Skype, an arrangement which has worked well saving time and money on travel.

A more recent development which is working well is the data sharing and IT issues consultation forum engagement sessions, which you can find out more information about below.

Even though we have fewer staff, we are continuing to look for ways to innovate to save money. In this edition, you will see that we are now able to share data via Searchlight for the administration of Blue Badges. And we continue to push ourselves on the boundaries around data sharing.

As always, we welcome feedback on what more we can do to support your delivery and improve the claimant experience.

Clare Elliott

Head of Local Authority Partnership
Engagement and Delivery division

2. New Blue Badge application data available via Searchlight

2.1 For the attention of Employee Authentication Service Organisational Administrators and Service Access Managers.

1. The Department for Work and Pensions is improving the way local authorities (LAs) access benefit information for Blue Badge applications by making some Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payment data available via Searchlight.

2. Many within your LA will already have access to Searchlight to use the information for decision making on Housing Benefit, Adult Social Care Financial Assessments and Disabled Facilities Grants, etc.

3. To access Searchlight, you need to be registered on the Employee Authentication Service (EAS). Those that administer Blue Badge may already have EAS accounts in order to utilise the following services:

• Searchlight
• Tell Us once
• Transfer Your File
• Verify Earnings and Pensions

4. If someone already has an EAS account, their permissions simply need to be extended by an Organisation Administrator (OA) to access the new mobility data tab on Searchlight when it becomes available – due September 2020.

5. OAs instigating and authorising access to the mobility data tab need to have, as a minimum, the ability to administer all of the services that person is going to access.

6. We will provide more information and guidance directly to LA OAs and Service Access Managers (SAMs) based on what we believe is the current set up within each authority.

7. If a person does not have an EAS account, one will need to be created. We believe existing OAs and SAMs are best placed to help do this as they have the necessary skills to create and maintain accounts.

8. If that is not possible due to staff resources, existing OAs can request a new OA to be set up. Once in place the new OA can then create and authorise any new SAMs. However, as with the old EAS system you will need to support any new OAs as it relies on existing users helping to upskill new users

9. To authorise new OAs or if you need any more information you can email [email protected].

3. Latest data sharing and IT issues consultation and engagement forum

10. The latest quarterly Data sharing and IT issues consultation and engagement forum was held on 24 June 2020, with over 270 participants attending the meeting.

11. If you would like to hear a replay of the call, send an email to [email protected] who will provide you with the dial-in reply details – available until 24 July 2020.

12. The next meeting to be held around September time and we will let you know the details for this nearer the time via this bulletin.

4. Housing Benefit decisions by the Upper Tribunal

13. Decision Making and Appeals (DMA) Leeds is not aware of any cases that have been decided by the Upper Tribunal (UT) since June’s edition of this bulletin.

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

5. New Legislation

15. The following Statutory Instruments (SI) have been laid:

• 2020 No. 600 The Social Fund and Social Security (Claims and Payments) (Amendment) Regulations 2020. Coming into force on 9 July
• 2020 No. 611 The Universal Credit (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2020. Coming into force on 13 July
• 2020 No. 618 The Social Security (Income and Capital) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2020. Coming into force 20 July
• 2020 No. 630 Occupational and Personal Pension Schemes (Automatic Enrolment) (Amendment) Regulations 2020. Came into force 30 June
• 2020 No. 634 The Automatic Enrolment (Offshore Employment) (Amendment) Order 2020. Came into force on 30 June
• 2020 No. 655 The Universal Credit (Persons who have attained state pension credit qualifying age) Amendment Regulations 2020. Coming into force 25 November
• 2020 No. 660 The Health and Safety (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020. Made 29 June

16. The following Statutory Rule (SR) of Northern Ireland have been laid:

• 2020 No. 107 The Universal Credit (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020. Made on 18 June

• 2020 No.108 The Social Security (Income and Capital) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020. Coming into operation on 15 July

• 2020 No.119 The Universal Credit (Persons who have attained state pension credit qualifying age) Amendment Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2020, coming into operation on 25 November

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

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

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

Document Type	Subject	Link
LAWD6/2020	Editorial Temporary Absence from home outside Great Britain Replacement of UC47 form and process for landlords Reminder: HB IP address collection HB Matching Service timetable and results spreadsheet Urgent final reminder: Discretionary Housing Payment end-of-year monitoring returns 2019-20 Cases with the Upper Tribunal New Legislation What’s new on our HB pages on www.gov.uk	LAWD6/2020
LAWD6lite/2020	Further guidance: Judgement RR –v- The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Reminder: Data Sharing and IT issues consultation and engagement forum LA Support Pack correction: National Benefit Fraud Referral Hotline link Questions and answers: Judgement RR –V- The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions	LAWD6lite/2020