Data Discoveries boasts proudly of helping Southampton City Council to identify people inappropriately claiming single person discount housing benefit either falsely or in error. This firm should not be allowed access to personal data again.
This firm really does not seem to know what it is talking about. Single person discounts are not a form of housing benefit, to begin with. A firm so ignorant of the basics is merely showing its own incompetence by making such statements, which it then compounds by slinging mud at Southampton residents in the following text.
This firm uses a traffic light system to categorise a discount as almost certainly inappropriate (green, challenge with confidence); medium risk (amber); and red (meaning there is an inconsistency).
I do not for one moment believe that this firm can decide where the sole or main residence of an individual is and whether or not they fall to be disregarded.
But it is clear that 6,000 people in Southampton - out of 36,000 'single person discount records' supplied to it by Southampton City council were identified as 'suspect cases' by this firm.
It claims that 80% of these corrected their 'discount applications'. This is nonsense. It is clear from the forms on the web site of the council that the 'corrections' are not corrections at all. There is nothing incorrect about receiving a 'single person discount' if more than one adult is resident. There
Is this firm aiding and abetting a council which is acting in breach of council tax discount law, by any chance?
The answer appears to be that it most certainly is.
My guess is that this firm put the code 'single person' on the records of some unfortunate people and simply asked Data Discoveries in how many of these cases it thought that more than one adult might be resident, and that the firm is falsely implying that if more than one adult was resident (in any sense) there was an inconsistency. As they fail to name any individuals those people maligned in this way are relatively powerless to respond to the insult.
Southampton does not appear to know that one can 'claim' a discount retrospectively, as it says on its web site that it will not allow such claims. Anybody who objects to this should simply appeal via the Tribunal system as this sort of practice by council is already the subject of adverse decisions and should be challenged. The law has no such restriction on backdating applications.
It goes without saying that Southampton is not applying CT law correctly, and, therefore, that the allegations of inconsistency which this data firm is so proud of making are inappropriate and therefore, arguably, in breach of data protection law. We have all the usual mistakes: allegations that residents have to inform the CT department of changes in circumstances when no such obligation exists in law, misleading use of the term 'single person discount' when no such concept exists in CT discount law, and so on.
Somebody resident in Southampton should report them to the Local Government Ombudsman.
