Many of you will have read in the local press about the concern arising as a result of a letter issued to 5,000 homes by the city council.
Many of you will have read in the local press about the concern arising as a result of a letter issued to 5,000 homes by the city council.
The council has sincerely apologised for any distress caused and clearly this was never our intention. However, as you, your family or friends may have received one of these letters I would like to explain the background and update you on this issue.
The city council has a responsibility to check that those claiming a single person's discount for council tax are still entitled to that discount.
In the past this has involved sending over 20,000 letters to households receiving the discount.
(Here his argument is equivocal. In the past they sent out letters to carry out their Regulation 14 duty to ascertain whether any discount should apply every year. He is conflating two different processes. Similar equivocatons sometimes use the ambiguous word 'verify'.)
But, this year, to reduce the number of households we need to write to and make substantial savings in officer time and postage, we have worked in partnership with three other Councils (Preston Chorley and South Ribble) to see whether the benefits of using data matching technology would make substantial savings to help keep council tax down in the future.
By matching available sources of information electronically, to identify those households that potentially may have more than one person linked to a particular address, we have been able to reduce the number of letters down from 20,000 to 5,000.
There has been some concern about the use of the electoral register to obtain information and we would like to reassure our customers that the council is entitled to use this information for statutory purposes such as this.
Roger Muckle
Corporate Director Finance and Performance
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Audit Commission Approval.
Council Tax (CT) Single Persons Discount (SPD) Update...
Four Lancashire Audits*
Independent pilot Matched CT SPD v Credit Applications/payments
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Applicants pouring in after investigation letters sent (Sept) o
No hard figures yet (*Blogger's Notes:
1 The use of the word 'audit'. This is not an 'audit'. On the contrary, auditors have no need at all to behave like bloodhounds. Note the phrase 'investigation letters'. The council said you didn't know if it was a fraud investigation until the end of the investigation
2 As almost everywhere in connection with this match, false information is provided. The council was not 'matching' SPD as the Audit Commission was at that time defining it.
3 Many of the false positives 'investigated' by these councils arose purely on the basis of electoral register information held by Experian Ltd of Nottingham and processed by them for payment by the council. Far too many council staff foolishly believe an output from Experian indicates that all adults counted by Experian have been applying for credit. This is simply a piece of incompetent stupidity. One victim of these Lancashire pilots had to get the ICO investigators in to sort of that particular piece of stupidity, which false belief was apparently held by the Lancaster staff answering phones to complainants. It is typical of the Audit Commission to pass on a wholly false idea.
1 The use of the word 'audit'. This is not an 'audit'. On the contrary, auditors have no need at all to behave like bloodhounds. Note the phrase 'investigation letters'. The council said you didn't know if it was a fraud investigation until the end of the investigation
2 As almost everywhere in connection with this match, false information is provided. The council was not 'matching' SPD as the Audit Commission was at that time defining it.
3 Many of the false positives 'investigated' by these councils arose purely on the basis of electoral register information held by Experian Ltd of Nottingham and processed by them for payment by the council. Far too many council staff foolishly believe an output from Experian indicates that all adults counted by Experian have been applying for credit. This is simply a piece of incompetent stupidity. One victim of these Lancashire pilots had to get the ICO investigators in to sort of that particular piece of stupidity, which false belief was apparently held by the Lancaster staff answering phones to complainants. It is typical of the Audit Commission to pass on a wholly false idea.
4 Almost every paragaph of this NFI report contains false information. It starts by stating how much money is 'spent' giving discounts. This is sheer nonsense, and ignores the fact that the discount reflects that sole occupants make fewer demands on services.
5 The NFI report also states that this money is deducted where there is only one adult in the house. This is a misleading statement. Estimates of the amount on money deducted on this basis are just that estimates, and may come from figures sent to central government by councils, but both councils and central government ought to and most probably do realise that the figures will not be and in practice never could be fully accurate.
6 The NFI say that wording of FPNs will depend on current wording on applications. This is an interesting point. Some 'applications' do provide false information about the statutory duty of the taxpayer and some say it is a criminal offence not to provide information when it is not even a civil obligation. So it seems reasonable to suppose that the multiple examples of councils not providing information required by law on council tax demand notices might be attributable to a desire of the NFI to 'set people up' using trick wording on application forms. I would not put this past them.
Kevin Boon
18 October 2006 o
