Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 5
5
Accepted
Inform the Committee how it will identify Housing Benefit fraud and support local authorities.
Conclusion
Local authorities have limited capacity to deal with fraud in Housing Benefit claims for supported housing. In other recent reports we have highlighted the Supported housing 7 limited capacity of local authorities to tackle fraud and stressed the need for central government to provide better support. We are disappointed to see that the problem of fraud is going largely unaddressed in supported housing. DWP acknowledges that there is unscrupulous behaviour in the sector and there are gaps in how it is dealt with. However, it is unable to identify how many of Housing Benefit claims for supported housing are fraudulent. Local authorities are responsible for managing Housing Benefit claims in their areas and while some have the resources to check individual claims for fraud, many do not. Furthermore, DWP samples just 60 housing benefit claims per local authority for fraud and supported housing benefit claims will only be a small portion of this sample. DWP tells us that it is working closely with DLUHC to help all local authorities to act on fraud. Recommendation 5: Within six months, DWP should inform the Committee about how it intends to identify the level of fraud in Housing Benefit for supported housing and how it will better support local authorities, including funding, to tackle this fraud.
Government Response Summary
By July 2024, DWP will undertake several steps to identify Housing Benefit fraud in supported housing, including understanding volumes, sampling specific cases for the May 2025 MVFE publication, developing plans for LA fraud referrals, and reviewing existing LA cases. This will inform future support and funding for local authorities.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. However, Housing Benefit fraud, for example, benefit fraud (from undeclared income, changes in circumstance, or falsified information) needs to be distinguished from unscrupulous provider behaviour as described in the Committee’s report. The former is what DWP will act upon in this recommendation, the latter is covered under responses to recommendations 1 to 4 above. DWP already provides LAs with funding to tackle Housing Benefit fraud and error in the main areas of loss, the top area being earnings and employment. DWP has two key initiatives in this regard; Housing Benefit Award Accuracy (HBAA) and Verify Earnings and Pensions (VEP). These initiatives provide LAs with funds to carry out full case reviews and action referrals from data matching against DWP’s benefits, tax credits and claimants' earnings information. By July 2024 DWP will: • look to understand the total supported housing volumes in the Housing Benefit (HB) caseload following completion in March 2024 of the LA review exercise. This will help DWP to identify the supported housing HB claims for potential fraud and error activities; • DWP’s Performance Measurement Team (the experts who sample benefit claims to check for levels of fraud and error) have just begun its next programme of sampling for Housing Benefit cases that are passported from Universal Credit – i.e. Supported and Temporary cases, to feed into the May 2025 MVFE (Monetary Value of Fraud and Error) publication. DWP will be looking at the early Management Information (MI) from this sample, as the team works through it from November 2023 to October 2024, to see if it provides an indication of specific fraud and error types not currently addressed through its existing Housing Benefit fraud and error initiatives; • further develop plans to support LAs in making quality Housing Benefit fraud referrals for DWP to investigate; and • look at cases LAs have carried out under DWP’s key fraud and error initiatives to understand how effective they are on tackling fraud and error in supported housing HB claims. All this will then determine what actions may be required to further support LAs, including consideration of how DWP will allocate existing funding provided to LAs in tackling fraud and error in the future.