Issue - meetings

Benefits Service Monitoring report

Meeting: 05/01/2022 - Executive, Resources and Contracts Policy Development and Scrutiny Committee (Item 72)

72 BENEFITS SERVICE MONITORING REPORT pdf icon PDF 512 KB

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Report FSD22002

 

The report provided information regarding the performance of the Benefits Service provided by Liberata for the period 1 April to 30 November 2021. A letter from Amanda Inwood-Field, Liberata’s London Regional Contract Director, was attached to the report as Appendix 1. This communication provided Liberata’s perspective of performance, together with an update on initiatives to be introduced in the coming months. 

 

In opening the discussion, the Chairman noted that the report mentioned that housing benefit and council tax benefit claims were already in decline from their peak during Covid which was undeniably good news.  The Chairman further noted that in respect of the error rate, Liberata were significantly overachieving for the KPI and questioned whether it would be reasonable to hold them to a lower level of 3%.  Representatives from Liberata confirmed that they would be happy to consider the request to introduce a soft target.

 

In response to a question from the Vice-Chairman concerning the 120% recovery rate for overpayments, representatives from Liberata confirmed that this figure included in-year recovery as well as recovery for the previous year.  The Vice-Chairman suggested that a detailed breakdown per year would be more helpful and requested that this be provided in future reports.

 

RESOLVED: That the report be noted.