§ Mr. CorbynTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if he will list the contractors for each London borough who are responsible for the administration of 209W Housing Benefit; how many complaints have been received in the past year about each contractor; and what inspections he has authorised. [158653]
§ Angela Eagle[holding answer 23 April 2001]: The administration of Housing Benefit is the responsibility of local authorities, regardless of whether or not it is contracted out.
From May, we will be collecting information on local authorities who contract out Housing Benefit work.
The following table represents, to the best of our current knowledge, the London boroughs that currently contract out this work and the contractors (two are in-house). The table also shows the number of written complaints we have received about the contracting-out of the administration of Housing Benefit in these boroughs, but not all specifically mention the contractor.
London borough Contractor Number of complaints Bexley Capita 0 Brent EDS 0 Bromley Capita 0 Croydon CSL 0 Ealing Vertex Datasciences Ltd. 0 Hounslow ITNet 0 Islington ITNet 2 Lambeth Capita 3 Lewisham In-house 0 Newham CSL 0 Southwark CSL 1 Tower Hamlets In-house 0 Waltham Forest ICL 1 Westminster Capita 4 We also received two complaints relating to the administration of Housing Benefit in Hackney by ITNet (the contract was terminated on 31 March 2001).
All of the boroughs in the table except Bexley and Hounslow have been inspected by the Benefits Fraud Inspectorate (BFI). These inspections were undertaken as part of a programme of inspections in England, Scotland and Wales which included local authorities which have contracted-out the administration of Housing Benefit and those which have not.