City of York Council now has one of the worst records in the country for handling new housing benefit claims, figures revealed today.

The housing department's performance, in a responsibility described by the Government as a "vital weapon in the war against poverty", slumped in the first three months of this year.

Between April and the end of June the council took an average of 63 days to settle claims - ranking it among the worst 25 per cent in the country.

The council's record for the whole of 2002/3 was only 56 days. The national average for the first quarter of this year was 45 days. A City of York Council spokeswoman said: "We are aware that our housing benefit response time is not as good as we would like.

"This is due to two major factors: the introduction of Government tax credits, which created a huge amount of additional work for the department, and the implementation of a new computer system to handle council tax and housing benefit, which took a large amount of staff resource and time.

"We hope that the new system will help us achieve our target of processing claims in 30 days 2004/05."

Selby District Council showed massive improvement, settling new claims in an average of 46 days in the first quarter of this year, For the whole of last year, officials took 70 days.

But Hambleton's average time to process claims rocketed from 53 days last year to 74 between April and June this year, placing it in the worst 25 per cent.

Ryedale processed claims within 38 days for the start of this year, down from 45 days; Scarborough took 48 days, up from 43; Harrogate took 51 days at the start of this year - no figures were available for the previous 12 months.

Updated: 10:55 Thursday, October 16, 2003