Issue - meetings

Mrs Liz Norris, Business Support Manager, introduced her report summarising the outcome of the work undertaken by Grant Thornton, the External Auditor, to certify the Housing Benefit Grant Claim submitted by the Council for the financial year 2017/18. 

It was noted that:

·  In terms of context the Revenues and Benefits Service carried out 63,000 housing benefit assessments during 2017/18 and the total value of the claim was £45.4m.

·  When the initial testing was carried out 4 errors were identified which resulted in a requirement for further testing to be undertaken.  The additional work identified 7 more errors and, as a consequence, a qualification letter was issued by the External Auditor.

·  The total value of the errors identified was £823 which, when extrapolated across the population of the claim, resulted in a total adjustment of £34,024 (0.07% of the total grant claim).  Since this figure was considerably below the error threshold set by the DWP (0.48% of total expenditure), the Council had continued to receive 100% subsidy for this amount.  Even after the adjustment, the total level of error in processing was 0.17% which was well below the threshold.

·  New procedures and training had been put in place to reduce the instances of such errors occurring.  The service also had a Quality Assurance process which enabled it to target these types of assessments and to correct any errors that did occur before they impacted on the customer or future grant claims.

In response to a comment by the Chairman that to achieve this level of accuracy given the complexity of the calculations was quite astounding, Mrs Norris confirmed that the rules governing Housing Benefits were very complex with different sets of rules depending on the circumstances of the claimant and the type of property involved.

RESOLVED:  That the findings of the Housing Benefit Grant Claim audit undertaken by Grant Thornton and the actions taken and planned by the Revenues and Benefits Service in response be noted.