Summary and recommendations
Summary
1 Ashford Borough Council (Ashford) is a district council in Kent. It has a gross revenue budget of £48.134 million. Ashford spends £19.28 million on benefits, which is 40% of its gross revenue budget. The main population centre is Ashford, although there is a substantial rural population as well. Ashford has good transport links with London and, from Ashford international station, with Paris and Brussels. There are 49 councillors, and the current party composition is Conservative 24, Lib Dem 9, Labour 9, Others 5, Independent 2.
Benefits services
2 Ashford benefits service (ABS) is responsible for administering Housing
Benefit (HB) and Council Tax Benefit (CTB). ABS is part of
the central services department which also covers revenues,
financial services, legal and ICT services, as well as administration
and Human Resources. ABS is managed with revenues, and Ashford
proposes to bring financial services into the division from
December 2001.
3 ABS employs 27 staff and had an administration budget of £986,220 in 2000/01. The Best Value Review (BVR), including counter-fraud work, was carried out between summer 1999 and February 2001. BFI’s detailed and rigorous best value inspection aimed to answer two questions:
- How good is the service?
- Will the service improve?
4 We consider that ABS is a one star service overall, which is probably going to improve. Our judgements are based on the evidence we found during our inspection which is outlined below. The service’s aims are clear. While benefit claim processing times are close to the top 25% as measured by reported best value performance indicators, ABS as a whole does not consistently perform at or close to this level, notably in terms of cost per claim and overpayment recovery. Nevertheless there are features of the service that other authorities could learn from. The quality of counter-fraud work needs to improve and ABS should develop management checks to help improvement.
5 At the time of our inspection, we concluded that Ashford is probably going to improve because the future direction and vision of the service is now clear and the improvement plan sets targets for the next five years. Nevertheless Ashford needs to develop its action plan further and in particular resource the delivery of the plan. We also have concerns about Ashford’s corporate ability to manage change.
How good is the service?
6 ABS has a number of strengths and good practices:
- Aims are clear and link with corporate priorities, and targets have been set for the next five years
- Verification Framework (VF) has been in place since 1999
- Processing times are close to the upper quartile
- Good progress has been made in reducing a work backlog
- Customer and partner satisfaction rates are high and claimant and partner feedback is highly complimentary
- There are performance management statistics for benefits administration
- Counter-fraud work is reported to be meeting current targets, and well exceeding WBS targets
- Prosecutions are being applied
- An innovative memorandum of understanding has been developed with Weald police
- There has been investment in new IT systems.
7 However, there are some areas for development:
- Publicity, leaflets and posters should be improved to raise ABS's profile
- The service’s costs remain high although Ashford plans to address this in the short and medium term
- We have concerns about subsidy issues, and the recent qualification of the subsidy claim by External Audit (EA)
- Overpayment recovery performance and processes are poor
- Financial management information, particularly on subsidy, is relatively limited. Ashford are introducing an integrated computer system that will enhance management information
- Management checks, particularly on counter-fraud work, need to be improved
- There were some significant weaknesses in the investigation process for the counter-fraud cases we sampled
- Ashford needs to be able to take forward prosecutions either in-house, or through outsourcing.
Will the service improve?
8 We conclude that ABS is probably going to improve. Stakeholders have been extensively consulted. Members, management and stakeholders are committed to improving ABS. Ashford has undertaken a thorough BVR, linked to corporate objectives and has developed (and is implementing) an action plan with clear targets. And, since our on-site inspection, officers have formalised a vision for ABS.
9 However, we have some reservations about Ashford’s ability to make step change improvements in performance:
- The BVR was lengthy and issues around challenge and competition were addressed late in the review. Some issues were being determined during our on-site inspection
- The action plan needs further development to:
- clarify expected outcomes and set priorities
- ensure definitive results rather than further reviews
- clearly specify any resource implications; and
- detail further activities, particularly for overpayments and counter-fraud work.
- Ashford has had some difficulties corporately in managing change. There are uncertainties about how impending corporate and service restructures will affect the delivery of improvements in the BVR action plan.