It took a long time to obtain a version of the Audit Commission's Audit Guide on Section 11 Discounts.*
I suspected it would probably be prejudicial and incorrect; so much of their material had been incorrect that it seemed unlikely that any document would get it right.
But the sheer scale of their incompetence and effrontery still came as a shock.
Why, why, why didn't even one local council put its head over the parapet and say 'Excuse me, you are making us pay for this processing, you are using the personal data of our customers to do it, and you are getting it wrong?'
Maybe nobody who read it was well enough trained to know the difference?
Maybe cost cutting has meant that councils employ any old dogsbodies to investigate, dogsbodies who simply assume that the Audit Commission gets it right? People whose background is in benefits and who assume that discounts work like benefits. If you make the assumption that this happened way back at the outset, when the pilots were conducted, a lot of the mistakes make sense, as does the use of inappropriate language from other legal contexts including 'awarded' and 'review'.
I am reminded of the loyal old horse in 'Animal Farm': if Napoleon says it is right it must be right.
Except the metaphorical pig in this case is the Audit Commission.
Too many animals! Enough!
* By this I mean, very generally, the guidance on what it means if more than one person is on the electoral register for an address where a Section 11 discount has been deducted. It means surprisingly little, and is in fact a perfectly legal and regular situation!
