§ Mr. WebbTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list the length of time taken in issuing housing benefit for each local authority in the United Kingdom. [61869]
150WAdditionally, from Monday 30 November, the scheme will be extended to include cases where arrears have arisen due to delays in reviews carried out on change of circumstance and in the periodic reviews carried out every two years.
The Agency currently has a nil-compliance rate of 20.38%. Details of each Business Unit are shown in the attached table.
We do not collect average processing times to transfer collected maintenance to parents with care. We measure the speed of payment to parents with care against a Secretary of State Target. The Agency exceeded the 1997/98 target which required that 97% of payments be passed to the parent with care within ten working days of receipt from the non-resident parent. At 31 October 1998 97%. of payments made to the parent with care were made within 10 working days of receipt from the non-resident parent. Details for individual Business Units are included in the attached table.
1997/98 saw a significant improvement in the Agency's performance. Through the hard work and dedication of the Agency's staff, for the first time in our five year history we met or bettered all of our Secretary of State targets. Letters of complaint to the Agency and to MPs continued to fall as a percentage of our caseload. But we accepted the need to improve our all-round performance in line with concerns expressed by Parliamentary Committees and Stakeholder Groups, rather than just our performance against formal targets.
In the short term, we are looking at the ways that we can change the way we deliver our service to address customers immediate concerns; to this end we have reviewed the way that we handle complaints and we have increased resources for our Client Helplines and the National Enquiry Line, extended our hours of opening to cover 8.00am to 8.00pm Monday to Friday and 9.00am to 5.00pm on Saturdays and begun pilots to greatly improve and increase clients' opportunities to secure a face to face service. For the longer term, we are looking at the ways that we measure our performance to ensure that our focus is on providing a service that meets our clients' qualitative needs as well as achieving formal numerical targets.
I hope this is helpful.
§ Angela EagleThe latest available data on local authority performance are for 1996–97. This is published in "Council Services Compendium" by the Audit Commission for England and Wales, and "Comparing the Performance of Scottish Councils" by the Accounts Commission for Scotland. These publications are available in the Library.
§ Mr. WebbTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security what plans his Department has to prevent local reference rent rules resulting in landlords refusing to let to claimants of housing benefit. [61870]
§ Angela EagleWe are currently reviewing the Housing Benefit rules with the Local Authority Associations to ascertain what changes, if any, are necessary to improve 151W the way the benefit is administered and remove anomalies from the system. The impact of the rent restriction rules is part of that review which is due to end early next year.