Single person discount frauds rolled back

After the last national fraud initiative, the National Audit Office said that

Cautious estimates for the full exercise, based on work carried out so far at pilot sites, suggest that the impact could exceed £200 million nationally.

What follows reads as a publicity puff, but the numbers are persuasive.

By way of background, we are told that over seven million householders are currently claiming single person discounts (SPDs) for council tax, and councils pay out over £2 billion every year. The full council tax bill assumes two adults living in a property; where only there is only one adult living in a property they can claim a council tax single person’s discount of 25 per cent.

Five million pounds has been saved in 2008 by local authorities working in unique rewards-based partnerships with Northgate Public Services to promote quality and assurance in Council Tax services through targeting ineligible discounts for single people.

According to the Audit Commission, up to £200 million of single person discounts (SPD) may be being claimed ineligibly every year, increasing the pressures on hard pressed local authorities to meet the diverse needs of vulnerable communities.
Figures released by Northgate today indicate that the median average of ineligible discounts for local authorities for whom they have provided their unique review services in England in 2008 was six percent, resulting in a millions of pounds increase in the tax base for a growing number of local authorities who are participating in the scheme.

In unique public private partnerships that link fees to performance, offering councils a self-financing approach to sharing risk with the private sector, Northgate provides local authorities with a fully managed SPD review service. This helps to promote revenue assurance as an integral part of transforming revenue and benefits services based upon citizen need. Local authorities who sign up only pay up when cancellations have generated a direct cashable saving. Councils who have benefited from the service include Kirklees and Walsall.

Graham Beckett, Divisional Manager, Revenues, Kirklees Metropolitan Borough Council, said today: “With the help of Northgate we ensured that people were paying the right amount of council tax and generated nearly £1 million in additional council tax.

“Effective data matching narrowed down the number of customers needing to be contacted directly, then a fully-managed service from Northgate, including dealing with all customer contact, ensured those discounts no longer applicable were removed and customers advised accordingly.”

Sharon Tait, Head of Revenues, Walsall Council said: “Following vigorous validation checks, 7.5% of our Single Person Discount claims were cancelled as a direct result of this exercise, combating fraud, reducing errors and saving valuable time".