Unachievable council benefits fraud targets set for shake-up

13 Jan 05
The Department for Work and Pensions is set to overhaul councils' benefits fraud targets following concerns that they are unachievable and could drag down authorities' Comprehensive Performance Assessment scores.

14 January 2005

The Department for Work and Pensions is set to overhaul councils' benefits fraud targets following concerns that they are unachievable and could drag down authorities' Comprehensive Performance Assessment scores.

A major revamp of the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate's seven performance standards – targets for council tax benefit and housing benefit services introduced in March 2003 – is likely to be completed by the time the next CPA round is undertaken.

Richard Courcier, the BFI's head of communications, told Public Finance that the targets were likely to be altered following ongoing consultation. A DWP source said the change was likely to involve 'a radical shift away from the reliance on the existing standards towards output assessments'.

It follows complaints by councils, the Audit Commission and the BFI itself that the DWP's standards, which heavily inform councils' benefits assessments in the CPA process, are virtually unachievable.

PF's research found that no authority has met any of the BFI's seven standards since the measurements were introduced. In 37 reports published on the BFI's website, including studies of high-performing councils such as Leicester, Liverpool and Manchester, all 259 targets have been missed. Some councils have met sub-targets.

There also appears to be little correlation between an authority's BFI report and the score it achieves in the CPA process.

The Audit Commission said that this could, in part, be attributed to the additional use of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's annual Best Value Performance Indicators for benefits services within the CPA. But, according to the ODPM's website, these indicators are also 'underpinned' by the BFI's standards.

A spokeswoman for the Audit Commission said its officers were 'satisfied' that CPA benefits scores 'accurately reflect the reality of the services at councils'.

Privately, the commission has voiced 'very real concerns' about the BFI targets. One source acknowledged that if the BFI reports were taken at face value, councils' CPA scores could be 'dragged down', a situation that would be politically intolerable for the commission and the ODPM.

Consequently, the source acknowledged, the CPA process had 'more positively reflected' the BFI's reports when producing CPA scores. That is possible because BFI reports describe how each council performs against each standard, even where that standard has been missed.

The potential impact on CPAs has sparked fears that the DWP's targets are too stringent.

City of York Council, which achieved an overall rating of 'good' in December's CPA, was so incensed by its BFI report that Quentin Macdonald, the authority's Liberal Democrat executive member for resources, accused the inspectorate of 'a lie' when it published the study in 2004.

Macdonald said the report did not reflect the quality of services when it was published. While York's CPA benefits score reflected its failure to come close to BFI standards – it scored just one mark out of five – other authorities criticised by the inspectorate scored well in the CPA assessment.

For example, the Isle of Wight, a 'fair' authority in the overall CPA ratings, scored four out of five marks for benefits. But its 2004 BFI report said it was 'significantly below' all DWP standards.

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