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Contact: Committee Section
Email: committee.section@gravesham.gov.uk
Items
No. |
Item |
7. |
Apologies
Minutes:
An apology for absence was received from Cllr Elizabeth Mulheran.
Cllr John Caller substituted.
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8. |
To sign the minutes of the previous meeting PDF 87 KB
Minutes:
The minutes of the
meeting held on Wednesday, 09 June 2021 were signed by the
Chair.
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9. |
To declare any interest Members may have in the items contained on this agenda. When declaring an interest Members should state what their interest is.
Minutes:
No declarations of
interest were made.
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10. |
Low Income Family Tracker (LIFT) Demonstration
Minutes:
The Head of Revenues & Benefits presented
LIFT to Members.
Members were informed that it was a brand new
software for the service which would be used corporately and
strategically to help identify those vulnerable residents who were
in financial crisis or were on the verge of going into financial
crisis. Identification and engagement were a key objective for the
service and the new dashboards available through LIFT would give
officer’s much more information. That information would allow
officers to provide support to more residents who previously may
not have been known to the service but were in need of financial
assistance.
The Head of Revenues & Benefits gave the
Committee a detailed demonstration of the Low Income Family Tracker
system.
Following the demonstration, the Head of
Revenues & Benefits fielded questions from the Committee and
explained that:
- The service had limited information
available to them but the service was promoting support available
to residents in the Borough and officers were engaging with the
community to ensure that anyone who needed support would receive
everything they were entitled to. LIFT was a very useful tool for
those identified as vulnerable through housing benefits but it
would also assist in identifying those vulnerable people that were
in receipt of Universal Credit but
weren’t in receipt of Council Tax Reduction which was
previously not possible
- LIFT was brand new and had only been
live for the last three months; it was updated monthly and over
time trends would appear as more data was fed into the system.
August’s data had just been received so new cases should
start to be seen by the team and hopefully that would continue
every month once the new data was received. The aim of the system
was to identify those in need so that they could be engaged with
and their arrears reduced; they may also be entitled to other
benefits which would be flagged up to the service and officers
would be able to advise people what they should be claiming
- There were three objectives for the
system:
-
Objective 1 – Use the information to strategically help
various departments across the Council
-
Objective 2 – Reduce the amount of people in financial
crisis
-
Objective 3 – Reduce the amount of Council tax arrears
- Backdated benefits were dependant on
the benefit and the rules in place for it; for example the Council
Tax Reduction Scheme could only be backdated one month
- One of the dashboards was only
received this morning but its role was to look at the effects of
universal credit and the effects of the removal of the additional
£20 per week. Currently the dashboard suggested that 87
households would be removed from universal credit as the current
amount they owed was less than the £20 per week but the
service would seek to provide support to those households. The
dashboard was new and it would be developed over time, as more data
was fed into the system trend analysis would be possible and
...
view the full minutes text for item 10.
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11. |
Corporate Register of Partnerships - Extract for P&A Cabinet Committee PDF 88 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Members were
informed of the Council’s involvement in
partnerships that were within the remit of the
Committee.
The
Head of Revenues & Benefits advised that the current
partnerships that most directly related to the work of the
Performance & Administration Committee were:
- Audit and Counter Fraud Shared Service
- Revenues & Benefits Shared Management
Arrangement
Members noted the
information contained within the report.
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12. |
Corporate Performance Report: Q1 2021-22 PDF 86 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
Members of the Performance & Administration Committee with
presented with an update against the Performance Management
Framework, as introduced within the Council’s Corporate Plan,
for Quarter One 2021-22 (April to June 2021).
The
Head of Revenues & Benefits guided Members through appendix two
and gave a statistical overview of each Performance
Indicator.
Members noted the following information:
- Gravesham Council were in the top quartile in the Country for
accuracy in relation to processing Housing Benefit
claims
- Collection of Council Tax as at end of August 2021 was up 1.8%
from this time last year
- Business Rates Collection had a decrease of 5.5% from last year
but that was largely down to the rules around retail discounts
changing. From 01 July 2021, instead of receiving a 100% discount,
businesses were only entitled to a 66% discount which meant it
increased the amount of money that Gravesham had to collect by
£4.5 million. The Council had had only two months since the
01 July to collect that additional money which was why the figures
had decreased; the remainder of the money to be collected had been
spread over the financial year to assist businesses
- The total number of reported corporate complaints had increased
but the corporate complaints process was being reviewed as it had
been revealed that a large number of the complaints should have
actually been classed as ‘service user requests’. Only
four of those forty one complaints went to stage two and of those
four only three escalated to stage three. Most of the valid
complaints in Housing were due to changes to the Housing Register
from 01 April 2021
The Head of Revenues &
Benefits gave Members updated figures for the Performance
Indicators as at end of August 2021:
- PI23 - Average processing time taken for Housing
Benefit – 14.2 days
- PI24 - Average processing time for changes of
circumstance in Housing Benefit claims (days) – 5.9 days
- PI
50 - Total number of people signed up to citizens
access – Increased by 2413
people
- PI55 - % of internal audit recommendations implemented –
16 were due for implementation by the end of June 2021, 7 of which
have been implemented with only 9 recommendations outstanding. The
team had issue reminders for responses by the end of September to
the lead officers and were still waiting for those responses. As of
today, the planned delivery stood at 21% with a
further 13% underway
- PI56 - % of information requests completed within statutory
deadline – The service had seen a 42%
increase in FOI requests; performance had not been
affected
The Head of Revenues & Benefits
and the Assistant Director (IT &
Transformation) fielded questions from the Committee and
explained that:
- An
FOI request could be rejected if it would take over eighteen
hours’ worth of work to complete however they were rare and
the majority were reasonably simple to provide a response too. The
service also published questions and responses online so that if a
similar FOI was requested then they could be directed
...
view the full minutes text for item 12.
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13. |
Audit & Counter Fraud Shared Service Review PDF 92 KB
Additional documents:
Minutes:
The Committee were
provided with a copy of the annual review that had
been conducted in respect of the Audit & Counter Fraud shared
service with Medway Council.
The
Assistant Director (IT & Transformation) outlined key points
from the report:
- Notice was received last week from a Counter Fraud Officer which
the service was looking to
replace
- All officers trialled in designated roles had been moved into
permanent roles with effect from 01 April 2021
- The second Audit & Counter Fraud Intelligence Analyst post
had been filled without the need for extra funding
- Progress against the Shared Services objectives could be seen at
page 38 of the report
- The four recommendations for the coming year had been refreshed
and were listed in the report, in full, on page 40
In
response to a question about officers returning to their roles, the
Director (IT & Transformation) advised that in the past
officers had roving roles amongst the services and operated in
different areas in different capacities. The officers had now
returned to their permanent roles where they would provide
specialist support to the team they were in.
In response to a
request from Cllr Hills about having more simplified language in
the report, the Assistant Director (IT & Transformation) agreed
to feed the comment back to the Head of Audit & Counter Fraud
Shared Services.
Members noted the information contained within
the report.
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