Issue - meetings

The report of the Head of Partnership

Mrs S O’Hanlon presented the report to Members. She advised that the year-end performance report would go to the annual meeting in June, however the information was ready and it may be a different membership of the committee, Management Board wanted all the latest detail to be reported to appraise Members of a very pleasing outturn for all three authorities with all of the key processing targets. She informed Members that all three authorities had met their respective targets to be below the threshold for LA error, which was always a hot topic during the year, but again the forecast was correct.

She drew Members attention to the note with regard to benefits of which they no doubt would have seen in the press with regard to fraud. One of the primary drivers around Universal Credit (UC) was that it would “dramatically reduce the chances of fraud entering the system (Lord Freud May 2012). She highlighted that the latest statistics showed that the idenfied fraud rate for UC was 5.3% against 4.5% for Housing Benefit., assuming that it is identified fraud.

It is worth noting nationally that the value of official error for UC  is £80m against a spend of £3.3bm compared to HB error value is £90m against spend of £22.3bn

She highlighted the performance against the targets as detailed below:

Council Tax

HDC                Target 98.6% Outturn 98.6%

HBBC Target  98.0%              Outturn 98.1%

NWLDC          Target 97.6                  Outturn 97.8%  - note this isn’t actually detailed on the performance report

Business Rates

HDC                Target 99.2%  Actual 99.3%

HBBC              Target 98.3                  Actual 99.2” (worth noting exceeded by 0.9%)

NWLDC          Target  99%                Actual 99.1%

Should note NW very close due to one large write off.

In response to a question from Councillor R D Bayliss, Mrs S O’Hanlon said that it would be possible to calculate the target should the write off for NWL have effected it.

Councillor R Hadkiss was pleased that it was the second year running that targets had been achieved which he felt was outstanding. He noted that in the last quarter HDC had to write off a large amount that could have affected the targets but the staff had still achieved.

Councillor R D Bayliss noted that if the amounts had to be written off due to the company not being able to pay it was no fault of the partnership and Members recognised that.

Officers highlighted that early indications showed that the three authorities were, in relation to Council Tax, the only ones with in Leicestershire that had increased/maintained their target figures and where the top three for Business Rates.

Councillor R Hadkiss asked that the thanks of the Committee be passed on to the staff for all their hard work

RESOLVED THAT:

The Performance Summary Report March 2018 be noted.