Guidance

LA Welfare Direct 8/2021

Updated 20 December 2021

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Queries about the:

• technical content of this bulletin, contact details are given at the end of each article
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Who should read

All Housing Benefit (HB) staff

Action

For information

Editorial

In October 2020 I moved from my role as Deputy Divisional Director for the Local Authority Funding Team to set up a new team in response to the No.10 announcement that £170 million of additional funding in the form of a COVID Winter Support Grant (now known as the COVID Local Support Grant) was being made available for county councils and unitary authorities in England. The grant supports vulnerable families with food provision and utility bills. Since then there have been a further three grants extending funding to 30 September 2021.

I would like to thank local authorities (LAs) for the successful delivery of this grant which has not been easy given the short notice provided and the number of local organisations LAs work with to reach as many vulnerable households as possible.

One of the positive outcomes of this work is that we are now able to share Universal Credit (UC) data with LAs. Phase one of that data share went live in early June 2021, when we shared UC claimant’s data (with a limited capacity for work, and income below specific thresholds) with LAs. At present, because this is linked to the COVID support grants, we are sharing this data with upper tier LAs in England only. However, we are planning to extend this to LAs in Scotland and Wales and district councils in England later this financial year.

We are currently working on the second phase of the data share which involves sharing UC claimant details with LAs that are subject to the Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy, Local Housing Allowance and benefit cap reductions. We hope to be able to share this data in late 2021 or early 2022.

There is an article on the latest UC and Housing Benefit (HB) data within which shows that more and more claimants subject to housing support reductions are UC claimants and LAs are struggling to identify these households without access to UC data. More information relating to the volume of UC and HB claimants subject to HB shortfalls and reductions is also included in that article. We have already received positive feedback from LAs that have used the UC data share to identify harder to reach vulnerable families and I hope LAs find the second phase of the UC data just as useful.

We would welcome any feedback on the UC data share, for example, how you have used it to support welfare delivery in your LA. You can send your feedback to [email protected]

The references to UC data shares in this editorial refer to data shares we have been able to set up fairly quickly to support the delivery of COVID related grants. The Local Authority Partnership, Engagement Delivery division is also considering more strategic UC data share solutions which LAs may find more useful. There is a separate article in this LAWD edition asking for LA representatives to volunteer to sit on a working group to explore those more strategic UC data share opportunities.

Adrian Shooter
Deputy Divisional Director LA Grants and Change Delivery Team

New online service local authorities can use to view valid registered lasting power of attorney details

1. The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) registers lasting powers of attorney (LPAs). LPAs let a person (known as the donor) appoint someone, or an organisation that they trust, to legally make decisions on their behalf if that person is no longer able to do so.

New online service

2. The Ministry of Justice, working with OPG in England and Wales, now provides a new online service which allows donors and attorneys of registered LPAs to share details of their LPA online. This makes it easier for donors and attorneys to share the details of an LPA with organisations and allows local authorities (LAs) to check that LPAs are valid and provides the facility to download a copy of the LPA summary for your records.

Accessing the service

3. In order to view an LPA, you must have a secure LPA access code (this is supplied by the donor or attorney).

4. You can only use this service for LPAs that were registered in England and Wales on or after 1 September 2019. For LPAs registered before this date you will still need to view the paper LPA documents.

5. This service is not available for LPAs registered with OPG in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

How it works

• donors or attorneys with LPAs registered on or after 17 July 2020 will have been sent an activation key with their registration letter
• if an LPA was registered on or after 1 September 2019, the donor or attorney will need to request an activation key online
• once the donor or attorney have an activation key they can create an account online and add LPAs to their account
• a donor or attorney can then generate a secure LPA access code which can be provided to an organisation to allow it to view a summary of an LPA

6. Further information on LPAs is available from OPG.

Change of tax year for Housing Benefit Matching Service self-assessment

7. At present Housing Benefit Matching Service (HBMS) self-assessment referrals are matched against the tax year 2018 to 2019.

8. From week commencing 9 August 2021 HBMS referrals will be matched against the tax year 2019 to 2020.

9. This means all LAs, will receive higher volumes of referrals and (possible) duplications within the first month of this change. However, volumes will start to decrease by month 2 of implementation.

10. Note: Going forward, changes to the tax year for HBMS will now be implemented in April of each year in line with HM Revenue and Customs procedures.

11. The following rules, which are detailed in the HMBS rule guide on Glasscubes, will be impacted:

• HBSA002
• HBSA003
• HBSA004
• HBHB405

12. If you have any questions you can contact [email protected]

£20 Uplift in Universal Credit

13. In March 2020 the Government announced the equivalent of a £20 per week increase to the Universal Credit (UC) standard allowance basic element worth up to £1,040 for one year for those facing the most financial disruption as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. This applied to all new and existing UC claimants.

14. At this year’s Spring Budget, a further 6-month extension of the UC uplift was agreed. The government is now shifting its focus to supporting people back into work and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has a comprehensive Plan for Jobs which the Budget builds upon.

15. Claimants will be notified of any changes to their UC entitlement via their statement which is available on their on-line account. DWP will communicate with claimants via their journals to provide information about the end of the uplift and the date they will receive their last payment with the uplift amount included.

16. The Local Council Tax Reduction data share will show the changes in the claimant’s new UC award entitlement when the payment has been made to the claimant.

Further Department for Work and Pensions led engagement events for LAs

17. In autumn 2020 the Local Authority Partnership, Engagement and Delivery (LA-PED) division held a series of virtual engagement events with LAs and DWP Partnership Managers.

18. The events were used to communicate what was happening in relation to HB and the UC Programme.

19. In April 2021, we began to consider this year’s events and following consultation with the Local Authority Welfare Steering group (LAWSG) and the Practitioners’ Operational Group (POG) concluded that, despite easing of restrictions, we should follow the same approach and format as used in 2020 and hold them virtually.

20. Therefore, we will deliver a rolling programme of ‘bite size’ one to two hour sessions by audio conference or Microsoft Teams starting in late November 2021 to LAs. DWP Partnership Managers will also be invited to join any sessions of interest to them.

21. These events will be run on a monthly basis from late November 2021 through to March 2022 and will cover the following topics:

• update from the Spending Review (depending on timing)
• HB Award Accuracy Indicator and the LA management information ‘Dashboard’
• LA IT mergers and sharing good practice
• UC update
• data sharing initiatives, such as care home admissions
• LA-PED engagement with LAs, county councils and devolved administrations
• landlord engagement
• DWP Service Transformation
• service delivery work
• data security and sharing at a local level

22. A timetable of the 2021 sessions along with joining instructions will be issued to LAs via their single inbox in the middle of September 2021.

23. If you have any suggestions for further topics please email [email protected]

Invitation to the next Data Sharing and IT issues consultation and engagement forum

24. The next forum will be held on Tuesday 14 September from 1:30pm to 2:30pm.

25. The dial-in instructions are:

• dial 0330 551 0214
• enter the participant code 2063082#
• dial in two or three minutes before the start time, as we aim to start the call promptly
• you will then be kept in a holding area, until the call properly starts at 1:30pm
• your line will be on mute as default but instructions will be given during the call if you want to ask a question

Forum agenda

• a 15-minute introduction from DWP covering projects recently delivered, projects currently in delivery, insight into future planned projects, as well as the most recent common issues that have been reported to us

• 30 to 45 minutes of questions from LAs on the call about the projects and matters covered in the introduction and any other IT and data sharing questions and issues LAs may have

• if time allows, 15 minutes focused on suggestions from LAs about future data sharing, data matching or automation projects that DWP could consider funding and delivering

26. High level minutes will be produced (focusing on the questions and answers session) and will be published on Glasscubes.

27. The forum is open to all LAs and it would be beneficial for every LA to have at least one representative dial into the forum to help us maximise feedback.

28. Each LA representative should:

• seek input and feedback from as many of their colleagues as possible prior to dialling in, for example, questions they might want answering

• have knowledge, at a high level, about data sharing, data matching and current IT topic areas

• feed back to their colleagues about how the conference call went, including the answers to the questions we were asked

29. We look forward to your participation on the call. However, If you have any questions in the meantime, you can contact [email protected]

Volunteers needed for new UC data share working group

30. LA-PED is looking at ways to improve the UC data LAs view and receive; particularly the data that is available on Searchlight and via the UC Local Council Tax Reduction scheme data feed.

31. LA-PED has identified some improvements from the feedback already provided by LAs and we are looking to build on this to ensure that we fully understand:

• LA’s requirements for data sharing
• LA’s priorities for those requirements
• the savings that meeting each individual requirement would bring
• how making the changes would improve customer service

32. Therefore, we are looking for volunteers from differing sized LAs with different IT suppliers, diverse ways of working and from locations throughout the country to form a small UC data sharing working group.

33. The working group would also benefit from having people who are familiar with:

• day-to-day processing
• managing and allocating work
• dealing with automation parameters
• funding/budgets

34. If this is something that you would be interested in and you know what it would take to help transform customer service, contact [email protected] for more information by 20 August 2021.

35. Once we have the working group’s feedback we will carry out an assessment to identify if any of the proposed improvements can be taken forward. For those that can be progressed the UC data sharing working group will be asked to provide honest and open opinions on guidance and screen design to support any proposed improvement. At this time, we are not able to provide a timescale for the possible implementation of improvements.

36. If you have any questions, you can contact the email address given above.

Latest UC and HB statistics

37. The latest UC and HB statistics as at February 2021 have been published on the DWP-Stat Xplore site.

Key points

• the data shows that the number of households receiving support with their housing costs (UC and HB) rose by 17% last year. The main reason for this is likely to be the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

• the number of people claiming housing cost support in UC increased by 1.1 million whereas the number of HB claimants only reduced by 310,000

• the number of UC claimants subject to housing cost shortfalls and reduction such as Removal of the Spare Room Subsidy (RSRS), benefit cap and Local Housing Allowance (LHA) has increased, and the volumes of UC claimants affected are greater than HB claimants

38. A summary of the statistics is shown below:

Combined UC and HB caseload

• as of February 2021, the combined HB and UC housing element in payment caseload was 5.6 million. This was up 17% (790,000) compared to February 2020

• the number of households receiving UC housing element was 2.7 million in February 2021, a 70% increase (1.1 million) on the previous year

• latest data shows the number of HB claimants decreased by 10% (310,000) to 2.9 million in the twelve months to February 2021

RSRS

• as of February 2021, 500,000 claimants in receipt of HB or UC housing element were subject to an RSRS deduction. This is an increase of 12% (55,000) compared to February 2020

• as of February 2021, 250,000 HB claimants were subject to a RSRS deduction, 12% fewer (34,000) than 12 months previously and 55% fewer (300,000) than the number of RSRS deductions when the policy was implemented in 2013

• as of February 2021, 250,000 UC housing element claimants subject to a RSRS deduction, 54% more (88,000) than 12 months previously

Benefit cap

• as of February 2021, 200,000 households had their benefits capped. 24,000 had HB capped and 180,000 had UC capped

• 120,000 more households had their benefits capped at February 2021 compared to February 2020. In HB, 6,900 (22%) fewer households had their award capped, while in UC, 130,000 (277%) more households had their award capped

LHA

• as of February 2021, around 2 million claimants in receipt of HB or UC housing element, in the Private Rented Sector (PRS), were subject to Local LHA rates. This is an increase of 41% (580,000) compared to February 2020

• around 580,000 HB claimants in PRS (83%) were subject to LHA rates as of February 2021

• around 1.4 million UC housing element claimants in PRS were subject to LHA rates as of February 2021

Reminder: HB Debt Recovery National statistics survey

39. LA-PED wrote to LAs on 2 July 2021 requesting that they complete a short survey on HB Debt Recovery (HBDR) National Statistics.

40. The aim of the survey is to gain an understanding of how the data is collated and the issues and ambiguities around HBDR data supplied by LAs.

41. The information will be extremely useful for DWP statisticians and, therefore, we urge LAs who haven’t responded to do so as soon as possible, as the next publication of the statistics will be 1 September 2021. A copy of the survey is attached again for ease (see Appendix A).

42. Whilst completion of this survey is voluntary, we would really appreciate all LAs’ input.

43. Completed surveys should be sent to: HBDR[email protected]

44. We would also like to use this opportunity to extend our thanks and appreciation to those LAs who have already completed the survey.

45. If you need any further information, you can contact HBDR[email protected]

HB decisions by the Upper Tribunal

46. Decision Making and Appeals (DMA) Leeds is aware of the following HB case that has been decided by the Upper Tribunal:

• CH/2655/19: Claimant appeal upheld. Capital. The Tribunal took insufficient account of matrimonial aspect of property valuation

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

New Legislation

48. The following Statutory Instruments (SIs) have been laid:

• Universal Credit (Coronavirus) (Restoration of the Minimum Income Floor) Regulations 2021 laid on 8 July 2021
• Social Security (Reciprocal Agreements) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2021 laid on 9 July 2021
• The Occupational Pension Schemes (Climate Change Governance and Reporting) (Miscellaneous Provisions and Amendments) Regulations 2021 laid on 15 July 2021

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

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

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

Document Type	Subject	Link
LAWD7	Editorial Verify Earnings and Pensions Service: Introduction of fluctuating non-state pension alerts Use of internet Explorer version 11 for accessing the Department for Work and Pensions internet services Update: Check Employment Information New HB Debt Service template HB Award Accuracy: Capita systems only Invitation reminder: Test and learn pilot for the Personal Independent Payment form PIP3007 email solution Cases (or Decisions) with the Upper Tribunal New Legislation What’s new on our HB pages on www.gov.uk	LAWD7
LAWDLite7/2021	Reminder: The Debt Respite Scheme (Breathing Space) local authority process Child Disability Payment (Social Security Scotland) Appendix A Creditor template attached	LAWDLite7/2021
Circular HB S9/2021	Introduction Funding details Payment details Annex A HBAA Initiative funding payments for LAs participating from 5 July 2021	Circular HB S9/2021

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