A government watchdog has crticised Coventry council's housing and council tax benefit service.
The Benefit Fraud Inspectorate said the council's checking of benefit claims was weak and it had not adopted a voluntary verification framework, which requires tougher investigation of claims.

The BFI said a new IT system and restructuring in the wake of Coventry's stock transfer to Whitefriars Housing Group in 2000 had led to a large backlog of claims.

As a result, the council gave priority to checking new claims and just 12% of renewed claims were processed on time.

Work and pensions minister Malcolm Wicks said the poor report would not stop Coventry piloting the new standard housing allowance, where a fixed level of housing benefit is paid direct to tenants. He said: "When we added Coventry to our list we knew that they had had serious problems about housing benefit. The pathfinders have to be representative. It's right that some areas [in the pilot] are ones that have been struggling."

Coventry council said it shared the BFI's concerns and had made "significant progress" since the inspection. It said it was now processing 57% of renewal claims on time and would have the backlog cleared by the end of June.

The report came as the Department for Work and Pensions announced the inspection of housing benefit departments in Barking & Dagenham, Bury, Isle of Wight, Knowsley, Milton Keynes, Portsmouth, Swindon and Wokingham councils, which the department dubbed the eight worst in the country.

Source

Housing Today