Section: Best Practices & Standards
Audit Commission Highs and Lows
Central Bedfordshire Council is the Slowest Paying Benefits
The Benefits Service provided by Central Bedfordshire Council is 'poor' and has 'poor' prospects for improvement, according to a independent report released by the Audit Commission.
The Audit Commission inspection team gave the service, which pays out almost £70 million a year in Housing and Council Tax Benefits, a zero-star rating.
Nigel Smith, Audit Commission senior manager, said:
"Central Bedfordshire Council is the slowest in the country at paying people the Benefits to which they are entitled. There are very recent signs that things are starting to improve but the rate of improvement is slow.
"To its credit, the Council recognises that an effective benefits service is vital to support the people most in need within the area, and is beginning to put a recovery plan together."
Strengths listed in the report include:
- Staff dealing with customers have a positive approach to customer care.
- Old and vulnerable customers living in rural areas get the help they need.
Weaknesses included:
- People are waiting too long for decisions on their claims.
- The Council has created unnecessary overpayments by not dealing promptly with changes in people's circumstances. It is also not effective at recovering overpayments, which has played a part in its losing out on over £200,000 in Government income.
- Access to Benefits for some people is difficult, particularly by telephone, leading to high levels of abandoned calls.
- The Council is not doing anything to encourage benefit take-up.
- Customers who appeal or ask for their claims to be looked at again have to wait too long for a decision.
To help the service improve, inspectors made a number of recommendations, including:
- Improving access to the service.
- Making payments to customers more quickly and more accurately.
- Developing an action plan to address the issues identified in the inspection report to make sure the service is managed effectively.
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Wolverhampton Homes Gets Top Marks
Wolverhampton Homes is giving tenants an 'excellent' service with 'excellent' prospects for improvement. The Audit Commission inspection team gave the organisation, which manages Wolverhampton City Council's 21,000 homes, a three-star rating.
Strengths noted in the report include:
- There is a strongly attitude to customer care. Services are easy to access and customer satisfaction is high.
- Support is in place for a range of activities that are increasing employment and training opportunities for local people.
- Improvements to tenants' homes are carried out in a very customer-focused way with good support for vulnerable and disabled tenants.
- Disabled tenants who need adaptations to their homes receive a prompt service.
- Wolverhampton Homes is doing well at collecting income from tenants and leaseholders and it is making sure that they have access to good quality money advice.
- The appearance of estates and blocks of flats is very positive and supported by effective estate inspections.
Weaknesses identified include:
- Customer satisfaction with complaints handling is relatively low.
- Communal areas in some flats are not fully accessible to disabled people.
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Other Full Inspection Reports
- Cheshire East Council: Strategic Housing Services - 'fair' one-star service with promising prospects for improvement.
- Durham County Council: Strategic Housing Services - 'fair' one-star service with promising prospects for improvement.
- Liverpool City Council: Strategic Housing Services - 'fair' one-star service with promising prospects for improvement.
- Teignbridge District Council: Strategic Housing Services - 'fair' one-star service with excellent prospects for improvement.
Paradigm Housing Uses Mystery Shoppers to Set Standards
Paradigm Housing's team of resident mystery shoppers has submitted its latest report, which shows that results have been consistently high but that there is also some work to do.
The latest mystery shops for summer and autumn 2010 reveal that Paradigm still has a way to go until all staff are consistently meeting the required standards on customer care.
Measures to improve performance include:
- A regular programme of four major shops a year have been scheduled, which cover eight months in any one year.
- All mystery shop results will go to Paradigm's management team.
- Any compliments or concerns about an individual member of staff raised by resident mystery shoppers will be passed on to the Association's managers.
- Compliments will be used as an encouragement, and concerns will highlight training issues for managers to work with the specific staff and their performance will be monitored.
- Poor performers will be targeted for future shops.
- Further training on the Customer Care Standards is being provided at staff meetings and we are providing regular reminders of the standards on our intranet system.
The resident mystery shoppers help the housing association improve its services through the Service User Quality Inspection scheme, which trains and pays residents to examine services.
For example, they may call customer services, posing as a customer with an enquiry and feedback their experience.
The scheme has been running for two years and now has 11 trained inspectors who will continue to monitor our progress on a bi-monthly basis.
As a result of the first round of mystery shops in spring 2009, a new set of customer care standards was created. All Paradigm staff have been trained in the standards and are given regular refreshers by the in-house customer service excellence team, which includes a Paradigm resident.
