The figures, released after a Freedom of Information request, show £4.7m was overpaid by Norwich City Council last year – enough to cover the black hole in the authority’s budget for the next financial year.
Housing benefit fraud has totalled just under £1m since 2008 while last year the council clawed back £108,136 and caught 51 housing benefit cheats.
Mistakes and delays on the part of housing benefit claimants in telling the council that their details had changed were the chief cause of the waste, rather than council error.
If they were honestly mistaken delays, would the money not be returned to the council?
Norwich South MP Simon Wright said:
It is shocking to discover that the scale of overpayments over the last three years have been so high.The amount of benefit paid is affected by income, savings, and the number of people living in a house, but delays by claimants in telling the authority their circumstances had changed meant 6.6pc of the £69m housing benefit cash, which comes from the government but is distributed by the city council, was overpaid last year.
It is generally accepted at most councils there will be some degree of error.
The issue is whether the people (claiming benefits) are aware that they need to inform the councils.
There are things that councils can do and have to do at a time when deficits need to be reduced.
That £4.7m is by one council on one benefit in one year.
Mr Wright called on councils to work with credit rating agencies to find out what claimants’ true circumstances are.
Norwich North MP Chloe Smith said the amounts wasted were “very concerning”.
She said: “I would like to see the council deal with this. It shouldn’t be beyond the council. I am sure staff are trying their very hardest but clearly more needs to be done.”
At Broadland Council £1,141,200 was overpaid in the same period – £1,058,600 caused by mistakes from claimants and £82,600 by mistakes from the council, while fraudsters took £311,200.
At South Norfolk Council where £76,314 was paid in error and cheats took £782,193, over half of the money has been recovered.
All the councils said they were attempting to claw money back and were punishing false claims through courts, sanctions, warnings and fines.
1 comments:
I agree that in some cases it may be fraud or passing misleading information to the Council. But in many cases it's Councils fault to deal with claims fast enough.
1. Norwich City Council deals with changes of circumstances over 17 weeks - that's what i waited and have been told.
2. There is many mistakes in statements of reasons - mine hasn't had my partner wages!!! while i passed to them wage slips to recalculate couple weeks before.
At the end their saying it's your fault but in some cases it's not. Lack of personnel and time to deal with customer needs it's not an explanation. Previously at City Council every single window had adviser , now only one of them operates(housing benefit). You never can reach them on the phone as you will get automated message their overloaded. I contacted to them many times to update details and they processed it in about 3 months. 12 weeks or even better 17 weeks is a long time and in current economical climate you can loose your job etc etc...That's why they're paying to much ....if i remember well couple years ago it wasn't as big problem as now and they dealt with any claim within 3 weeks so overpayment was less likely to become a problem. It is normal that if they pay you too much money while they process information and updates within 17 weeks or even months this will create overpayment. Is this delay your fault or their? The answer to this question I will leave for readers.
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