South Ayrshire Council News

Members of South Ayrshire Council’s Leadership Panel have received an update from Officers on the service improvements being undertaken to help the Council meet national standards for housing and Council Tax benefits.

The Panel receives quarterly updates on the progress being made to meet set targets in the following areas:

• Percentage of new claims decided within 14 days of all information being received.
• Average number of days taken to process new claims.
• Average number of days taken to process changes of circumstances from the date of the change being notified.
• Accuracy of housing and Council Tax benefit awards.
• The amount of housing benefit overpayments recovered during the period as a percentage of total amount of housing benefit overpayments identified during the period.
• Number of successful sanctions.
• Customer satisfaction levels.
• Gross administration cost per case for housing and Council tax benefit.

Councillor Bill McIntosh, the Council’s Portfolio Carrier for Resources and Performance said: “The Officers processing the claims have worked very hard to improve the service and have reduced the average speed of processing new benefit claims to 21 days. In addition they have increased the speed of processing changes of circumstances to 14 days. Importantly 60% of overpayments for 2007/08 have been recovered as well as 22% of the prior year overpayments that greatly exceeded the target of 15%.

“We are working to ensure that the available resources reach the people who really need them as quickly as possible. The benefits offices are closed every Wednesday and this is greatly assisting the speedy processing of claims and enabling the Council to provide a more focused and responsive service to benefit claimants.”

Unfortunately some people make fraudulent claims and during 2007/08 the benefits counter-fraud Officers achieved 58 sanctions relating to fraudulent benefit claims.