Agenda item

The Executive Director Finance and Resources introduced Lisa Devey, Assistant Financial Support Services Manager

Responsible for Quality and Improvement and Welfare Support Development and clarified that the Housing Benefit Subsidy claimed for 2016/17 totalled £23.2 million and over twelve thousand transactions had taken place. The Department for Work and Pensions had no level of materiality so there was no margin for error within the system and through the audit process key actions were identified each year.  If there was evidence of error in one case it was assumed all other cases could be wrong. There had been a full system conversion as the Bromsgrove and Redditch claims systems had been brought together providing more functionality. There was a ninety three percent accuracy rate and no concerns. A number of improvements had been made for example more staff training and flagging up staff weaknesses and providing training to specific members of staff when required. Financial support to implement changes in the system had been provided by the Department of Work and Pensions.

The Assistant Financial Support Services Manager confirmed that the extra resource enabled more checks to be conducted. Over four hundred checks had been completed during 2017/18.

Mr Percival referred to the snowball effect of the audit process. If in year one an error was identified this would lead to further testing. It would take three years to work the errors out of the system. It was hoped that the volume of work would reduce and the audit fee could come down.

Members’ queried the impact of universal credit and it was confirmed by Mr Percival that there was no indication that Housing Benefit subsidy would disappear from local authorities’ responsibilities and no indication that Universal Credit would replace Housing Benefit in its entirety.

In response to the Chair’s query it was confirmed by the Assistant Financial Support Services Manager that Civica was the system used by the Council to process Housing Benefit claims.

The Chair sought reassurances that the higher number of errors than expected would improve.

Mr Percival explained that he could not give false assurance that the number of errors would go down, improvements would take time to work through the system.

In response to the Independent Member’s question regarding the cost of additional auditing Mr Percival explained that estimates based on other local authorities of a similar size with a housing benefit revenue account demonstrated that the costs for Redditch Borough Council were comparatively high and he was keen for these costs to come down. Although there may be failures in the audit testing, there was not a failure to act on the issues raised but this took time to work through the system. In response to further questioning it was clarified by Mr Percival that there was always a risk of human error as individuals had to input data, although he was keen to see errors come down. It was important to recognise that the Accessors were often working in difficult circumstances, managing people in distress.

The Assistant Financial Support Services Manager gave the example of somebody inputting 23p rather than 32p creating a 9p error. Forty cases had been checked and no significant errors had been discovered.

Mr Percival emphasised that of the £23.2 million Housing Benefit Subsidy, a total of £538 in errors had been identified. An error of a few pence meant that auditors were obliged to test a sample of forty cases.

Members referred to the time spent on this work and Mr Percival explained that there was strict compliance required and the Department for Work and Pensions left very little to discretion. If there was an isolated incident, further testing might show the situation was acceptable but further testing could show more errors which would mean the audit would be ongoing.

RESOLVED:

That the Committee note the Audit Letter and the ongoing plans to continuously improve the quality and accuracy of assessment and data input.