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Benefit Fraud Inspectorate (Tandridge District Council)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. James Plaskitt): On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the BFI inspection report on Tandridge District Council was published today and copies have been placed in the Library.
In 2004–05, Tandridge District Council administered some £11 million in housing benefits, about 28 per cent. of its gross revenue expenditure. In June 2005, BFI carried out an inspection on Tandridge District Council's administration of overpayments.
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Inspectors found there was a great deal of commitment and professionalism in the council's efforts to administer overpayments, together with a determination to improve performance. Good practices enabled the council to recover 16 per cent. of outstanding overpayment debts in the first quarter of 2005–06 alone.
However, the Council did not always use the correct effective date when calculating overpayments, and some claims could have been suspended more promptly to limit overpayments. Decision letters to benefit customers need to be improved, as they did not always indicate when overpayments were recoverable.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is considering the report and may ask the council for its proposals in response to BFI's findings.
Benefit Fraud Inspectorate (West Dunbartonshire Council)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. James Plaskitt): On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the BFI inspection report on West Dunbartonshire Council was published today and copies have been placed in the Library.
In 2004–05, West Dunbartonshire Council administered some £41 million in housing benefits, about 22 per cent. of its gross revenue expenditure. The council was selected for inspection of its counter-fraud arrangements because it reported to the Department that it had not achieved any sanctions between April 2003 and March 2005.
BFI found that the council's overall performance in countering fraud was poor. Although the council had an anti-fraud strategy the management structure of the benefits service did not create a strong counter-fraud environment or focus and there was a lack of management control over the counter-fraud work that was done.
West Dunbartonshire Council acknowledged its shortcomings in this area and is committed to improving performance, including developing an action plan to address the recommendations made in BFFs report.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is considering the report and may ask the council for its proposals in response to BFI's findings.
Benefit Fraud Inspectorate (Dacorum Borough Council)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. James Plaskitt): On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the BFI inspection report on Dacorum Borough Council was published today and copies have been placed in the Library.
In 2004–05, Dacorum Borough Council administered some £29.5 million in housing benefits, about 24.5 per cent. of its gross revenue expenditure.
In 2004–05 the council was taking an average of 63 days to process new claims for housing benefit and council tax benefit and had significant backlogs of work. The introduction of a new benefits IT system in 2003 and the absence of expert full-time staff had caused problems and the backlogs and underlying reasons for them were never fully addressed. Effective recruitment since
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late 2004 has led to improvements and the average processing time for new claims was 42 days for the first quarter of 2005–06 and the backlogs are now cleared.
Good practices included adopting the Department's Verification Framework from April 2005, monitoring workflow, and prioritising changes of circumstances to reduce overpayments. However, processing changes of circumstances deteriorated from an average of 14 days in 2004–05 to 25 days in the first quarter of 2005–06.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is considering the report and may ask the council for proposals in response to BFI's findings.
Benefit Fraud Inspectorate (Aberdeen City Council)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Mr. James Plaskitt): On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the BFI inspection report on Aberdeen City Council was published today and copies have been placed in the Library.
In 2004–05, Aberdeen City Council administered some £49 million in housing benefits, about 9 per cent. of its gross revenue expenditure. The inspection covered Aberdeen City Council's administration of overpayments.
The council displayed many strengths including: an excellent quality checking regime; 90 per cent correct classification of overpayments; calculating overpayments correctly, within 14 days; correctly deciding whom overpayments should be recovered from; and a good audit trail.
More could be done to recover large debts from housing associations and improvements were needed in the control of overpayments work and the council's write-off procedures.
The council is working with BFI's Performance Development Team to improve its action plan to recover overpayments.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is considering the report and may ask the council for its proposals in response to BFI's findings.
Pathways to Work
The Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform (Margaret Hodge): The Pathways to Work model was launched in seven Jobcentre Plus Districts in October 2003 and April 2004. These Districts were:
I would like to update colleagues on the very encouraging results from the pilots and announce implementation dates for the next phases of rollout.
We are seeing an 8 percentage point increase in the number of people coming off incapacity benefit within six months. This remains an early tentative but extremely encouraging finding. The evidence from the Pathways to Work pilots continues to far exceed our expectations. The number of people with a health
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condition or disability in the seven pilots who have found work now exceeds 17,000. Over 14,000 incapacity benefit customers have voluntarily accessed some element of the choices package to help them move back towards work. This includes 6,660 people who have attended the innovative Condition Management Programme, delivered through our successful partnership with the Department of Health, NHS and Primary Care Trusts.
Overall, more than 21 per cent. of all new customers who have a Work Focused Interview go on to access choices provision. Pathways to Work is making a real difference to the lives of people on incapacity benefit. We are undertaking a rigorous evaluation of the programme and that evaluation will inform our programme.
In the December 2004 Pre-Budget Report my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the expansion of Pathways to Work to an additional 14 Jobcentre Plus districts. These Districts serve Local Authority areas with the highest concentrations of incapacity benefit customers. This will allow us to focus resources on those areas where Pathways to Work will have the greatest impact.
The expansion will be implemented in three phases from October 2005 through to October 2006.
I can therefore announce that the first phase of this expansion has today been launched in the following Jobcentre Plus Districts:
The remaining Districts to follow next year are:
From 24 April 2006: Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster; City of Sunderland; County Durham; Lanarkshire and East Dunbartonshire; Liverpool and the Wirral; Greater Manchester Central; Swansea Bay and West Wales;
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