Housing and Council Tax Benefits Administration in England: A Long-Term Perspective on the Performance of the Local Government Delivery System

Abstract

The Coalition government announced, in 2010, that between 2013 and the end of 2017 all existing claims to income-based welfare allowances, including housing benefit, would gradually move to the Universal Credit (DWP 2010). This article evaluates the performance of the Council Tax and Housing Benefits Administration Services under the current system for the delivery of these benefits since they were transferred fully to local authorities in 1993 up until December 2011. During this period the performance of local government has been influenced by four successive national delivery regimes, namely: Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT); Best Value; Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) and Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). An earlier article (Murphy, P., Greenhalgh, K. and Jones, M., 2011. Comprehensive performance assessment and public services improvement in England – a case study of the benefits administration service in local government. Local Government Studies, 37 (6), pp. 579–599) examined the CPA period in detail and found a significant improvement in performance across all types of authorities in all parts of the country during this period. The current article complements this earlier analysis and provides a longer-term perspective on the performance of the benefits service between 1993 and December 2011. The findings of this article show that under CCT the performance of the system was poor, there were wide variations in individual local authority performance, with many acknowledged inadequacies in the system and unacceptably high levels of fraud. However, towards the end of CCT and in the subsequent Best Value period the antecedents of some of the tools and techniques subsequently used to drive improvement in the CPA era were either put in place or were being developed. The Best Value period itself did not show significant improvements in performance and it was not until many of the initiatives were refined, developed and applied within the CPA framework that sustained and significant improvements became evident. This overall improvement generally continued under the CAA although the previous trend of consistent reductions in the variation between authorities’ performance had changed between 2009–2010 and 2011–2012. It is too early to judge whether these latest trends will be maintained under the Coalition government’s localism regime.

Key Words:

• Local government
• performance management
• service delivery
• council tax and housing benefits
• public sector reform

Notes

1. The DWP website refers to changes to definitions and the collection regime, making comparisons of results impossible, but accepts that the figures are suitable for investigating long-term high-level trends, which is the objective of this article.

2. The Second National Housing Benefit Accuracy Review (DSS 1998) revealed that approximately 2% of Housing Benefit cases were fraudulent; a further 4% had fraud strongly suspected, and in another 1% fraud was mildly suspected. At that time, the Audit Commission and the National Audit Office estimated that HB fraud and error varied from £900 million to over £2 billion a year (Audit Commission 1997, 1999).

3. The data available on the DWP website only cover three-quarters for 2011–2012 at the time of writing. The authors have used the average of the three median values available for 2011–2012 as a proxy for the median measure.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Murphy

Peter Murphy is a principal lecturer in public services management at the Nottingham University Business School, Nottingham Trent University. He joined the business school in 2009 following nine years as a senior civil servant. Prior to joining the civil service he was chief executive of a local authority in Leicestershire.

Kirsten Greenhalgh

Kirsten Greenhalgh is a lecturer in the accounting division of Nottingham University Business School. Previously, she worked as a management accountant in both the NHS and local government. Her principal research interests revolve around performance measurement in the public sector.

Martin Jones

Martin Jones has worked for Nottingham Business School for 14 years and is a principal lecturer in accounting, finance and management, specialising in the public services. Previously he worked in senior financial positions within local government.