DAMNED: but is report really fair?

BENEFITS claimants in York who earlier this year were threatened with eviction because of delays in processing their claims are likely to feel outraged by a damning report into the council's benefits service.

Inspectors from the Government's Benefit Fraud Inspectorate (BFI), who visited the council for an audit in May and June, seem to confirm what many claimants must have felt. Namely that the benefits service, which every year hands out nearly £30m in housing benefits, was hopelessly incompetent.

The BFI report draws attention to a catalogue of delays in processing benefits claims. By June, the inspectors said, there were more than 1,500 claims outstanding in the city - almost 1,000 of which had been waiting longer than eight weeks to be processed.

Those delays were causing hardship for some of the city's most vulnerable people. People such as Samantha Dodsworth and Dave Benson (see panels), who faced the threat of eviction for not paying rent by the very authority which was failing to process their benefit claims.

The problems were compounded, the BFI inspectors said, by the council making it difficult for claimants to discuss their claims. There was a catalogue of other failings too. In fact, the council was failing to meet the required standard in every single one of the seven categories against which its benefits service was measured.

There was waste on a grand scale too, the report implied. Some £450,000 was spent on employing agency staff in an attempt to cut the claims backlog - "very poor value for money" for a job the council should have been able to do itself. And the council was also likely to lose £280,000 in government grant that was conditional on meeting targets.

York MP Hugh Bayley described the report as "the most critical I have ever seen", and warned the apparent waste of money made it difficult for him to lobby the Government for extra cash for York in the new spending round announced yesterday.

Dave Merrett, the opposition Labour group leader on York council, also went on the attack.

"We have had concerns for some time about the delays in processing benefits applications, and this report confirms our fears," he said. "The council is letting down some of the most vulnerable people in the city."

The council, however, has come out fighting.

Quentin Macdonald, the council's Liberal Democrat executive member for resources, points to a damning sentence in the inspectors' report that reads: "City of York Council is providing a poor benefits service."

"That is not true," he says. "It is actually a lie."

Defiant stuff. How can he justify such a claim?

Much of what the inspectors say may have been true when they visited six months ago. However, in the six months since, huge strides have been made in tackling the backlog of claims. So where in June, for example, 960 claims had been waiting more than eight weeks to be processed, by last month that number had been cut to only seven.

What angers the city council about the BFI's report is that it is unfair. The BFI inspectors knew the council was implementing changes in its benefits systems, Coun Macdonald says. They knew that by June it had already made progress. And they knew further improvements were on the way and that the council was getting to grips with the problem. Yet they gave it no credit for doing so. "That annoys me," he says.

The council's performance figures bear out the claim there has been a turnaround in the past six months. As well as the dramatic fall in the number of claims taking longer than eight weeks to process, the average time taken to process a claim has also fallen by almost half, from an average of 81 days to 45. Still too long, but an improvement.

The real question is how did the benefits service get into such a mess in the first place?

Part of the problem was that the computer system being used was out of date. The council's previous Labour administration ordered a new computer system at a cost of £2m.

At the beginning of August last year - by which time the Liberal Democrats had taken over - the old computer system was switched off. For the next six weeks, while the new system was installed, no new benefits claims could be processed. Predictably, the backlog mushroomed from fewer than 600 taking more than eight weeks to process in July last year to more than 1,500 taking that long in October.

Gradually, as staff got used to the new system, that backlog began to be dealt with.

Then came another blip.

The council launched a campaign urging people who were entitled to benefits but were not claiming them to do so.

There was a surge in claims and the backlog grew again - peaking in May and June this year, when the BFI inspectors visited.

Coun Macdonald says benefits staff are working hard to deal with the backlog. There is still much to do.

"But the benefits service is now achieving the kind of service we have always aspired to," he says. "It is already significantly better than it was before the changeover to the new computer system and we have plans for further improvement."

For the sake of York's benefits claimants, let's hope so.

Case study one

SAMANTHA Dodsworth was eight months pregnant when she faced eviction from her Acomb home. She was £300 in arrears with her rent, a situation she blamed on City of York Council's refusal to pay backdated housing benefit.

The council claimed its staff had done everything they could, and that repeated requests for information and proofs from the claimant were not forthcoming.

Miss Dodsworth's case was taken up by York MP Hugh Bayley, but it has still not been dealt with to her satisfaction. Her benefits have not been backdated and she is still repaying the arrears.

"I was made to feel like a complete fool," she said, as her two-month-old son Theo bayed for her attention in the background. "It was incredibly hurtful.

"I'm quite pleased that the benefits service is now getting a taste of its own medicine."

She wasn't surprised by yesterday's report - she said she knew only too well that the service was failing - but she did feel vindicated by it.

"I was basically told to shut up and go away; no one returned my calls, different people told me different information, and I even had the phone slammed down on me," she said.

"I felt they were prejudiced against me from the start because I was young she's 20 and pregnant. I think they put me into a neat, little category as soon as I walked through the door."

Miss Dodsworth said she hoped the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate's report would give City of York Council a "kick up the bum". She acknowledged that staff had a lot of applications to deal with, but stressed that common courtesy costs little in terms of time or money.

"It was their attitude that drove me mad," she added. "If people had just treated me with a bit of human decency, I wouldn't have had to go to my MP and the Press."

Case study two

"THERE'S only one word to describe the people who dealt with me - gormless," said former York Signaller Dave Benson, who left the Army after developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

"This report doesn't surprise me in the least. The treatment I received was disgusting from start to finish, and I know I'm not the only one."

Mr Benson's PTSD, which emerged after he witnessed horrific incidents in Iraq, left him unable to work when he returned home to Haxby.

His condition was not helped by the fact that he was told by City of York Council that his application for help with rent and council tax could be delayed by about five months because of a backlog, leaving him facing the possibility of eviction.

His father, Nigel, confirmed that when he tried to tell council officials about his son's circumstances, he was met by "blank looks".

"There was no empathy; no feeling that they saw me as anything other than another piece of paper to add to their pile," said Dave Benson. "I felt as if I had no choice but to go to the Press.

"I didn't just act for myself. I knew there must be other people in the same boat who didn't feel able to speak out."

He said he hoped the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate's damning report would spur the York benefits service into prioritising its cases more efficiently.

"I don't think anyone deserves to lose their job over this, they just need to do their job better," he added. "My experience proved to me that the system was a complete shambles.

"The council now has an opportunity to turn the service around. Whether it will do it is another matter."

How York's benefits service failed

Claims processing: Extremely poor, said the inspectors. By June this year, new claims were averaging 81 days to process. The target is 30 days. Agency staff were brought in to try to clear the backlog at a cost of £450,000, but when the inspectors visited, these efforts had been unsuccessful. There were still more than 1,500 claims outstanding.

Unfair, the council says. The number of outstanding claims in June was still unacceptable, but far lower than in October the previous year, indicating real progress.

Customer services: Access to the service for claimants was restricted by limiting the number of telephone lines open at certain times.

The priority was to tackle the backlog of claims, the council says. The more staff there were manning telephones, the fewer there were to process claims. Now, with the backlog under control, there will be more staff to answer queries.

Management: Management practices were so poor that the average cost of dealing with each benefits claim rose by 50 per cent between 2001/2 and 2003/4.

There were a number of reasons for the increase in costs, the council says - one of them being spending £2m on installing the new computer system. It is that system which has enabled such an improvement in the past six months.

Overpayments: Serious failings in the recovery of overpayments, inspectors said. Amounts outstanding as a result of the council paying claimants too much stood at £190,000 in June.

An overpayment of £190,000 out of almost £30m paid out in benefits is pretty small, the council says.

Countering fraud: The fraud team "had achieved some impressive results with limited and relatively inexperienced staff," inspectors conceded. Nevertheless, the council failed to meet the required standard overall. Inadequate management information was undermining the effective control of fraud casework and the ability to identify fraud patterns and so focus resources on areas of greatest risk.

The new computer system is addressing that, the council says.

Updated: 10:41 Friday, December 03, 2004