Agenda item

The Chair introduced the report, and invited the officer to offer any comments on it. D Skinner apologised for the missing sheet and explained its stated purpose was to provide Committee with analysis of quarterly performance and risk management within Finance & Resources for the quarter to September 2017. He said one of the main points to note was that when the CSU was brought back in-house, the reporting line changed from him to R Smyth; This meant that performance measures were now being reported under R Smyth and the report will go to Cllr Harden. 

The Chair asked Cllr Elliot if he had anything to add, which he did not. 

Cllr Silwal commented on (pg 30 of the Agenda pack); and asked why it was taking so long to decide the Housing Benefit Claim; he asked if it is due to the new Universal Credit system. C Baker responded saying that it was disappointing as DBC had reduced the target down to 20 days from 22 or 23 days in previous years.  He said that Performance was around 30 days; He said the key problem, similar to Building Control, was a lot of gaps in staffing at present and difficulties in filling those vacancies.  He said that two or three people had left, and they had been unable to replace them; in addition they also need to manage remaining employee’s leave requirements throughout the summer.  Although they had tried using agency staff, it was difficult to find individuals with the required skills. As a result, DBC had not had the capacity to deal with the claims. 

Cllr Silwal asked if problems related to Universal Credit were caused by staffing issues.  C Baker said Universal Credit was an odd situation. He said that DBC were halfway through rolling out this new process, and there were single people who were out of work at the moment that needed to claim Universal Credit but, he said, virtually everybody else who needs help with their housing costs still need to claim Housing Benefit.  He said the roll-out of the wider Universal Credit for everybody had started this month.  He said it was not expected to have an impact in Dacorum, with Hemel Hempstead, Tring, Berkhamsted would not be affected until Summer/Autumn next year.  C Baker said that it may have had impact in the wider job market for people with Housing Benefit skills, as there has been a reduction in the pool of skilled staff available to do the work. 

The Chair raised an issue with C Baker, who had said that DBC had reduced the target.  The Chair said according to the previous year’s figures, the target was 20 days - he was concerned that there had been an increase of almost 50% of the average time taken between the corresponding period last year to this year.  The Chair said he accepted the recruitment aspect of the problem, but he was concerned about what appears to be a trend. 

C Baker accepted this.  He said DBC were developing alternative methods to make sure these gaps were filled.  He said DBC were in contact with colleagues in the other districts around Hertfordshire, who confirmed this is a problem that is affecting all boroughs. Taking into account the difficulty in getting staff, he said DBC, were also ensuring that that the processes was as efficient as possible. 

The Chair commented that the Secretary of State has publicly said that when Universal Credit commences, there should be no reason why it should take longer than four weeks to process and get the first payment. He said DBC did not want a situation where, through a lack of staffing, DBC were not able to deliver Universal Credit in the way that it is expected. 

C Baker explained that DBC were not responsible for the delivery of Universal Credit itself.  He said that what DBC would find is that as the Universal Credit roll out expands, and takes in more people, it does actually produce the work of DBC. He said that housing costs would be moved from Housing Benefit into Universal Credit, and that Universal Credit was managed by staff within DWP.

Cllr Tindall commented that the Benefits department do a fantastic job, particularly when they are dealing with residents who are on zero hour contracts, because they are particularly vulnerable.  Cllr Tindall said he had referred two people who had been experiencing problems with the processes and that the Benefit Department at DBC had done a superb job.  He asked C Baker to encourage staff to continue their good work with those particular people who are vulnerable, because of their employment status.  C Baker said he would relay that to the team.

Cllr Taylor noted (pg 32 of the Agenda pack); He said that DBC were taking longer to collect debtors, noting that these delays has gone up to 46.6 days and last month’s results were 47.2, and asked why. He said last year’s results were 35.6

D Skinner responded saying that a relatively small number of large high value debts for specific activities, some of which relate to commercial properties, were historic late payers. He said that they did pay eventually, however because of this, the figures were distorted. He said he should be able to provide the position if these late payers were excluded, which should show a much improved position in performance.  D Skinner also added that DBC took appropriate Court action.

Cllr Taylor said he suspected that there was an element of timing insofar as it showed as an overdue length of time to pay; some debtors were actually fact paying on a regular basis but outside DBC’s normal terms, so the cash flow was good but the ‘debtor days’ were bad. 

Cllr Elliot added that DBC set very high targets with regard to ‘debtor days’ and there are glitches if there are large payments overdue but he wouldn’t be too hard on the processes. Cllr Elliot also confirmed that DBC did write off the occasional bad debt, highlighting this was part of commercial life.

Cllr Adeleke referred to pg 31 of the Agenda pack, regarding Council Tax, noting that the target was 98% and DBC was currently hitting 92%.  Cllr Adeleke said that people that have a problem with their Council Tax, may also be on benefits or face other issues; he asked if anything could be done to progress this time, to shorten it from 14 days to something lower.

C Baker responded by saying this was not a measure of people contacting DBC with issues with their Council Tax, such as a payment delay or who may be subject to enforcement stages; instead this measures the time DBC responds to someone who was making an application for single person discount or just having moved to a property, so DBC could maximise collections back from people.  He said DBC had set itself a very high target, trying to achieve 98% of responses to people within 14 days, therefore it would be very difficult to respond within 7 days.  C Baker said DBC was increasingly trying to automate these processes; e.g., webforms for individuals who had just moved into a property in Dacorum had been set up so that this information could be submitted to DBC at the earliest opportunity. C Baker said that in the subset of someone who is trying to contact DBC a different matter or concern, this would be looked at that as a separate issue. 

The Chair highlighted that comparable figures for September 2016 indicated that DBC had responded within 4 of exactly the same number, despite having 200 more enquiries than 2016.

The Chair asked R Smyth a question relating to the RAG, on these, at the top of page 31, the figures 0 0 4 appear.  The Chair said he did not know what those numbers related to. R Smyth explained that RAG is Red, Amber and Green. This assessed the performance target over the last rolling 12 month period, as well as the quarter period; this was to see how often an indicator has been green, amber or red.  He said the purpose of this was to give the Committee a sense of how consistently DBC were performing. The Chair thanked R Smyth for the explanation. 

Outcome: At the invitation of the Chairman, the Committee agreed the contents and recommendations of Finance & Resources report for Quarter two 2017/2018.

Cllr Elliot absented himself from the meeting.