Guidance

LA Welfare Direct 3/2024 Lite

Updated 9 December 2024

Contact

Queries about the:

• technical content of this bulletin, contact details are given at the end of each article
• general content of this bulletin and distribution of this bulletin, contact: [email protected]

Who should read

All Housing Benefit staff

Action

For information

Recording of the Move to Universal Credit LA conference call posted on Glasscubes

1. Thank you to all those local authorities (LAs) who dialled in to the LA conference call on Friday 15 March 2024. The call was recorded and, as promised, has now been shared with LAs using the Glasscubes platform.

2. The recording has been posted on Glasscubes and will be available to replay at your convenience. On this occasion, to help ensure wider accessibility to the recording, you do not need to be a member of Glasscubes to access it.

3. We are currently collating all the questions which were posted in the chat facility during the call and will circulate these with responses as soon as possible.

Have your say on our Pension Credit stakeholder toolkit

4. As valued stakeholders, we would like to invite LAs feedback on our Pension Credit stakeholder toolkit. The toolkit was developed to help you raise awareness of Pension Credit and we are keen to hear your views on the suitability of the content and assets so we can make improvements.

5. Our Department for Work and Pensions Campaigns team has emailed invitations to LA communications and press teams to take part in a short survey. If you have not received the link to it or have any questions regarding the survey, please email [email protected]

6. This voluntary survey should take approximately 10 minutes to complete, and the closing date is 29 March 2024.

7. We appreciate you using your valuable time to fill in this survey. The more LAs who take part the greater impact your feedback will have on informing improvements.

Housing Benefit Debt Recoveries statistics

8. The Housing Benefit (HB) Debt Recoveries statistics for the first two quarters (April 2023 to September 2023) of the financial year ending (FYE) March 2024 were published on 6 March 2024.

9. The headlines were:

• LAs identified £225 million overpaid HB - £16 million more than for the same period in FYE 2023.
• LAs recovered £218 million overpaid HB - £19 million more than for the same period in FYE 2023.
• LAs wrote off £31 million overpaid HB - £1 million less than for the same period in FYE 2023.
• The total amount of outstanding debt has fallen. At the start of quarter 2 of the FYE 2024, total outstanding debt stood at £1.69 billion. This was £45 million (3%) less than for the same period in FYE 2023.

10. You may want to consider benchmarking your LA performance against those of your neighbours or comparable LAs. Invariably, the current economic climate and declining HB caseload will be impacting your HB Debt Recovery figures and this is a way to consider if the impacts are similar.

Update: Landlord Portal guidance

11. Guidance for landlords regarding the Landlord Portal is currently hosted on the Understanding Universal Credit webpage. This guidance is moving from Understanding Universal Credit to GOV.UK the week commencing 18 March 2024.

12. A redirect link will be put in place on the old Understanding Universal Credit web page to the new content on GOV.UK once the Universal Credit pages are removed. However, it can be accessed now at Social rented sector Landlord Portal.

13. Additional information for landlords on automation tools and the Landlord Portal has also been published on GOV.UK.