Love Delivers Soaring Performance and Crackdown on Fraud
Rory at the Coast & Countryside Residents’ Board AGM with Chairperson, Betty Garfield and Shepway Housing Secretary Cllr Keren Belcourt
Since Cllr Rory Love took over the Revenues and Benefits Cabinet portfolio in May, the time taken by the Council to process new housing benefits claims has almost halved. That was one of a number of staggering improvements to the service that Cllr Love outlined at the annual meeting of the Coast & Countryside Residents’ Board in Hythe on Tuesday, where he had been invited as the guest speaker.
He told the meeting that the improvements, which had been achieved without any additional cost to the taxpayer, either by recruiting temporary staff or paying staff overtime, were the result of measures he had implemented since taking on the portfolio.
Cllr Love said:
“For some lower-paid people, housing benefit is a financial lifeline. We understand how important is it that they get the money they are entitled to as quickly as possible.
“Since May, the average time taken to process new claims has dropped from 37 days to 21 days, and nearly a third of claims are now processed within 48 hours.”
“I asked the Council to make a concentrated effort to clear a backlog of work and to introduce some more efficient ways of working. We have made sure that more assessors are available to talk to people when they come into see us and we have extended scheduled appointment times with claimants from 30 minutes to an hour so that we can go through all the paperwork thoroughly and ensure we have everything we need to process the claim. We have also improved the information we give to claimants about the evidence they need when completing a claim.”
Betty Garfield, Chairperson of the Board, said:
“The Coast & Countryside Residents’ Board welcomes the significant improvements which put Shepway alongside the best councils in the country.”
Cllr Love also described the Council’s continuing crackdown on benefit fraud. He said that last year, Shepway had issued 24 formal cautions, issued 9 penalties, and successfully prosecuted 20 benefit cheats.
10th September 2008
“ Nearly a third of claims are now processed within 48 hours ”