§ 55. Mr. John Huntasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will make a statement on the implementation of phase 2 of the new housing benefits system.
§ Dr. BoysonThe main start of housing benefit involved the reassessment of about 1.8 million supplementary benefit cases in DHSS local offices and the calculation of their housing benefit entitlement by local authorities and also the reassessment of about 4 million existing local authority rebate and allowance cases. Although there have been local problems, and errors in individual cases, local reports indicated that the great majority of claimants were reassessed on time.
We have recently collected further reports. The summary of these reports is as follows:
DHSS local offices
Number of cases remaining to be assessed by 31 July about 5,000. The great majority of these are private tenants, deliberately held back in local offices at the request of local authorities under traditional arrangements.Local authorities
Local authorities have reported the following position for the completion of the take-on exercise.