The benefits service provided by Wigan Council is ‘fair’ and has ‘promising’ prospects for improvement, according to an independent report released today by the Audit Commission.
On a scale from zero to three stars the Audit Commission inspection team gave the benefits service a ‘fair’, one-star rating. This was because customers are at the heart of the design of the service. This has led to an easily accessible service for all, strong working relationships with partners, high customer satisfaction and successful take-up work encouraging local people to claim all the benefits they are entitled to. However, processing times are slow and overpayments are increasing. Recent changes offer the service significant opportunities to improve.
Pat Johnson, Audit Commission senior manager, said:
‘People in Wigan who depend on the benefits service are mostly served well by the Council. It is easy for them to get in touch with the service and they are very positive about their experiences. Taxpayers benefit too as good fraud prevention measures are in place. Getting benefit payments to those entitled to them helped support the Wigan economy during the recession. But up to now this very good ’front of house’ service has been poorly supported by IT systems. This has led to some of the problems covered in our report, such as slow processing times. We are convinced that this will be sorted out reasonably soon, and consider prospects to be promising.’
Strengths include:
- customers can claim free school meals at the same time as claiming housing and council tax benefit;
- successful take-up campaigns brought in nearly £400,000 in additional annual benefit awards to local people during 2009/10
- contributing to the Council’s success in addressing homelessness;
- effectively tackling fraud; and
- effective use of discretionary housing payments has provided extra support to those facing financial hardship.
Weaknesses include:
- taking too long to process new claims and changes of circumstance;
- increasing levels of overpayments;
- inadequate assurance that payments to customers are correct; and
- there has been no robust challenge of the value for money the service delivers.
To help the service improve, inspectors made a number of recommendations. These include:
- Prioritise work effectively so claims for those likely to result in a change to benefit entitlement are processed quickly.
- Carry out quality assurance work consistently throughout the year.
- Develop an effective approach for regular monitoring, evaluation and delivery of value for money.
Wigan Council’s Benefits Service pays out around £93 million in benefits per year to 34,606 local people. The Service employs 113.5 full time equivalent staff and the cost of running the Service for 2009/10 was £4.8 million. It received £3.2 million from DWP, with the balance met by the Council.
Copies of the report are available from Wigan Council or from the Audit Commission website at www.audit-commission.gov.uk.
Notes to editors
- The Audit Commission is an independent watchdog, driving economy, efficiency and effectiveness in local public services to deliver better outcomes for everyone.
- Our work across local government, health, housing, community safety and fire and rescue services means that we have a unique perspective. We promote value for money for taxpayers, auditing the £200 billion spent by 11,000 local public bodies.
- As a force for improvement, we work in partnership to assess local public services and make practical recommendations for promoting a better quality of life for local people.
Further details about the role of the Audit Commission can be obtained from www.audit-commission.gov.uk
For a copy of the full report or further information please contact: David Rose, Regional Communications Manager - North of England, on 0844 798 6654 or d-rose@audit-commission.gov.uk