Foreword

This is our first report on the administration of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit in the London Borough of Lewisham (Lewisham). Lewisham is the third largest London Borough in terms of size and population. Unemployment is above the national average and the area has a high level of social and economic deprivation. In 1999/2000 nearly £111 million was paid out in Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.

Lewisham is a forward thinking borough, keen to:

• provide high quality customer service
• take up the counter fraud tools provided by the Department of Social Security
• be involved in closer working projects with the Benefits Agency
• use IT to gain efficiencies in the provision of its services.

Evidence of this determination and commitment is given in the main body of the report.

Lewisham’s public enquiry service is the best we have seen. A network of neighbourhood housing offices is supplemented by an Access Point offering a "One Stop" service with "Telly Talk", which allows members of the public to use a video-conferencing system to see and talk to council officers and a call centre.

Lewisham introduced the verification framework in October 1998. It has done so without the backlogs and frustrations reported by other London boroughs. The verification undertaken by Lewisham is very thorough. An exercise carried out by Lewisham fraud investigators did not find any discrepancies in declared and actual income that had evaded Lewisham’s verification framework procedures.

Commendably, Lewisham has introduced all recent central government initiatives designed to secure benefits administration. There are weaknesses in its use of some of them. For example, additional evidence of identity is not obtained for claimants in receipt of Benefits Agency benefits and the Do Not Redirect scheme is not used for all benefits post.

Lewisham rigorously pursues recovery of overpayment using the powers of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 and charging orders when all else has failed.

Lewisham amalgamated 2 fraud investigation teams about 8 months before our on-site visit. The quality of investigations varies, largely because of the different backgrounds of the investigators, and some established investigative techniques are not used.

There are also some very positive findings about Lewisham’s counter fraud performance. Where fraud is detected, Lewisham prosecutes or offers administrative penalties. It proactively seeks referrals and gets good results from data matching exercises. Providing the relatively few identified deficiencies and weaknesses are addressed, Lewisham’s counter fraud measures will be effective in preventing and deterring fraud.

I would like to thank the management and staff of the London Borough of Lewisham for their co-operation, support and patience during this inspection.

Susan Lingwood
Acting Inspector