Social Security Agency (Hansard, 3 July 1997)

§ 5. Mr. Worthington

The targets are in line with the objective of improving the service provided to customers and fully support the standards established in the Northern Ireland Citizen's Charter. I am satisfied that the targets represent a demanding challenge for the Agency. The targets will be included in the Agency's 1997–98 Strategic and Business Plan, which is due for publication in July. A copy of the Plan will be placed in the Library.

The targets are as follows:

Benefit clearance times¹

Jobseeker's Allowance claims:

71 per cent. in 10 days
93 per cent. in 21 days.

Faster Family Credit:

93 per cent. in 5 days.

279W

Benefit accuracy

Income Support:
to pay the correct amount in at least 87 per cent. of cases.
Incapacity Benefit:
to pay the correct amount in at least 98 per cent. of cases.
Family Credit:
to pay the correct amount in at least 93 per cent. of cases.
Disability Living Allowance:
to pay the correct amount in at least 99 per cent. of cases.
Jobseeker's Allowance:
to pay the correct amount in at least 87 per cent. of cases.

Customer satisfaction²

90 per cent. of customers to regard the Agency's service as satisfactory or better.

Financial recovery

recovery of Social Fund loans—£27.17 million
recovery of overpayments—£4.6 million³
benefit savings from detection and prevention of fraud—£15.00 million sign-offs as a result of anti-fraud activity—5,500
sign-offs as a result of anti-fraud activity—5,500
Class I contributions identified as underpaid to the National Insurance Fund—£1.65 million
Collection of Contributions owing to the National Insurance Fund⁴—£1.4 million
Contributions identified as underpaid to the National Insurance Fund—to provide a return on Challenge Fund investment of 9:1⁵.

Resource Management

to live within a gross allocation of £40.34 million for Social Fund loans and Community Care grants
to live within the Agency's gross running cost budget allocation
to achieve cash efficiency savings of the order of £5.50 million.

¹ Clearance time is measured from the date of receipt of a claim or application in the office to the date on which the claim or application is decided. The measure, therefore, excludes the time taken to issue notification of the decision and any payment.

² The customer satisfaction target is presently measured by independent survey and usually covers a two year period, in this case 1997–98.

³ It has been decided to combine the previous figures for Income Support Centralised Benefits and Unemployment Benefit with the new figure for Jobseeker's Allowance into one overall Overpayment Recovery Target. This target is based on a percentage of the overall outstanding debt, which will be much more challenging than the existing system. The yield in 1996–97 was £2.56 million.

⁴ This was an internal target in 1996–97, but has been raised to Ministerial status in line with the Contributions Agency in GB.

⁵ This is a new target for the Agency.