Several past and present grandees of the Audit Commission will be giving evidence to this committee today, October 30th.
I expect that if the NFI is mentioned, the same dodgy statistics and misleading statements will be produced, ie figures including 'single person discounts' incorrectly believed by the Audit Commission to have been wrongly 'claimed or awarded' included in NFI success figures to inflate them, and the usual assertion that the NFI matches data to identify inconsistencies.
But whether the committee will pick up on this I cannot tell.
In any case, I see no reason to believe that any of the people responding here will know anything about council tax discount law, electoral registration law, or the interrelationship between the two laws, and so on that basis the committee would be wasting its time asking questions.
One of these is a person from whom I received what purported to be an apology. This was an apology for giving an unintended impression of duplicity, which they had to offer following comments by their Independent Complaints Reviewer. They denied providing guidance on how to investigate on the grounds that it was ultra vires and then refused to provide a document because it contained guidance on how to investigate. As it happened I never asked for or wanted guidance on how to 'investigate' only on how to 'interpret'. It was the very denial that they did provide guidance on how to investigate that suggested that they were doing it. Why else start denying it when the topic had not even come up?
He did not even manage in his letter to state correctly what he was apologising for. I have always thought that the apology must have been drafted by the same persons involved in misunderstanding the F of I request in question, which took me a Tribunal Appeal to get sorted out. I thought this because in the apology the same mistakes about what I was asking for were made once again.
I had asked for a copy of particular guidance on how to INTERPRET the output of one computing exercise, and given that they had published a number of pieces of such guidance, their refusal to provide this particular interpretation still seems plain irrational (until you read it, when a number of possible reasons for not wanting it to be scrutinised suggest themselves!).
When I said they should stop providing guidance on how to investigate if this was ultra vires, they said there was nothing to stop it, by which I assume they meant that I had to get a judicial review to stop it and nobody had done this yet. This is how 'in your face' that body can be.
They ( the committee) are talking about the need for audit committees to be independent. The problem then is who holds them to account when THEY GET THINGS WRONG, as the NFI has done with council tax discounts? What happens when audit committees follow slavishly legally false and prejudicial advice such as that provided in the Audit Commission Single Person Discount National Roll Out Audit Guidelines since at least 2007? What happens when they falsely believe that this output indicates that a person is (suspiciously) making two conflicting 'claims' at the same time?
The problem is that being 'independent' may bring with it a lack of accountability and the opportunity for individuals with strong personal social, political or even 'moral' objectives to have a wide and powerful space within which to lobby for and work for their own personal aims.
The 'moral' objectives of the Audit Commission were made clear when it said that councils had in its view a 'moral' duty to investigate people whom the Audit Commission thought 'might not be entitled' to their discount. The AC doesn't even know that the probabilities are as it keeps no account of numbers of abortive investigations/false positives.
Along with independence must come an absolute and clear requirement for objectivity, balance in all reporting and so on.
The approach of the Audit Commission has fallen far short in this, to the extent that it has had the brass neck to assert that councils are under a 'moral' obligation to subject people whom the AC thinks 'might not be entitled' to their discounts to investigations. This is not an 'accountancy' objection, it is a personal and subjective one, and one which it could be argued is highly improper, especially if adherence to it leads, as it appears to, to ignoring serious misrepresentations made about individual data subjects. If a council behaved like this, the AC would arguably be the first to jump up and down and make threats about public interest reports.
But then somebody from Scotland does mention accountability of Auditors. LOL He says it is a core purpose of Audit Scotland to attach meaning to its reports. BUT IT THINKS THERE IS A SOLE OCCUPANT DISCOUNT AND THAT YOU CAN TELL THAT A PERSON APPEARS NOT TO BE ENTITLED TO IT BY LOOKING AT THE ELECTORAL REGISTER. LOL. His own case proves that Audit Scotland is failing.
But the case of Scotland is instructive. The Scottish Parliament was fed what turned out to be a great deal of misinformation by Audit Scotland about how the National Fraud Initiative worked and what it did and was told it was merely bringing Scottish Law in line with that of England. It was never told the truth about the single person discount exercise, with Clive Lewis's opinions being trotted out as war hammers as if they proved anything about the matter, when in fact they seriously mislead. Then Audit Scotland produced a new code of data matching from which every vestige of protection against being identified as a potential thief using statistically and probabilistically based computer analysis had apparently been expunged. I have no doubt, having read its proposals, that the long term strategy of the Audit Commission and its partner data merchants is that this is precisely the sort of product which will be sold to the Secretary of State when the NFI gets its new home.
They are now talking about auditors carrying out enquiries which could lead to a public interest report. On the basis of Clive Lewis's legal opinion, such an enquiry could take place because some stupid auditor thought you could tell by looking at the electoral register that people were claiming a discount to which they appear not to be entitled. And if the auditor was 'independent' the council would be unable to protect even the vulnerable adults whom it has a duty to protect from this gross stupidity.
On whistle blowing, given that the NFI Audit Guides have been closely kept secrets, fat chance if it is the Auditor's conduct that needs a whistle blown at it.
They comment on the auditor's professional framework. This must be a joke!
On non payment of fees: why should the council pay the Audit Commission for making false and prejudicial assertions of a thousand or so of its residents, to many of whom it owes a duty of care as vulnerable adults?
They are now talking about data: well we all know the NFI does not understand the data it gets. It thinks some people are claiming a 'sole occupant discount' which does not exist. It keeps thinking this however many people tell it that it is wrong.
Now they are asked about the NFI. I have no idea whether Ms Waterman knows anything about council tax discount law. I would be very surprised if she did and if she looks on the NFI secure web site for legal information she will find utterly prejudicial and false information.
The American lady says 'in fact' this year they identified nearly billion pounds worth of fraud and error across all their participants. (45.30 minutes in according to the player). One has to assume this includes lots of pounds of allegedly but not actually fraudulent or erroneous section 11 discounts. Nothing about abortive investigations. Nothing about 'potential fraud and error'. How these people mislead so smoothly via passing remarks. She says that the connection with the local auditor will be lost wherever the new home of the NFI is.
This is odd because the NFI has said that the sole occupant discount matching is an auditor function. This was the whole thrust of their initial argument.
She mentions pushing the authority to pursue 'recommended' matches. There is nothing in the plans which would allow this relationship to continue. We know that Audit Commission's 'moral' position on fraud investigations/fishing trips. She lists the potential homes. Four she says, adding the NAO which was suggested in the consultations to the bill, but not initially by the Government. Oh so she has read these has she? (Probably got copies sent direct). She seems quite keen on the Cabinet Office of the three. I don't know why: what do they know about local government finance legislation or electoral law? Presumably the Cabinet Office has policies on data mining which the Audit Commission likes?
She likes the idea that the NFI is developed so that it can address 'future and operational financial 'risks'. I suppose she is getting a hint in about data mining here, and note the mentions the concept of 'risk' as opposed to actual inconsistencies, even though O'Higgins has only just told Parliament again, as usual, that the NFI matches data to identify 'inconsistencies'.
But we know the agenda of the Audit Commission, and that of credit reference agencies and data merchants, I suppose. She thinks that unless the NFI can develop and have matches 'addressed' you could lose the advantages. In other words the Audit Commission will no longer be able to use its influence to impose its individual agenda on evidence free fishing trips into statistically identified 'potentially suspicious' cases.
Mr O Higgins also puts in his penn'orth, but his accent is a bit hard to follow and the sound not good.
Yes he is talking about potentially something or other transactions. Transactions that 'may be suspicious'.
And he does say that the auditor can pursue the body to see whether they have in fact investigated those potentially suspicious transactions. He says there needs to be somebody responsible for following up on 'potentially suspicious' transactions. This argument goes against what it says in the explanatory notes for the draft local audit bill. It does against the code of practice which the Audit Commission wrote and gave to the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament.
From uncorrected transcript
Michael O'Higgins: It is not just a suitable home. It is slightly more than that. What the
National Fraud Initiative does is identify transactions that may be suspicious. They are then
passed to the relevant body for investigation. The advantage of the current arrangement is that
the auditor can pursue with the relevant body whether they have investigated those potentially
suspicious transactions. So there would need to be a nexus not just to identify potentially
suspicious transactions but to have somebody with responsibility for following up on them.
And Clive Lewis's account of the legal powers of the auditor makes it fairly clear that he can only investigate actual inconsistencies, actually suspicious evidence in documents relating to the accounts. He specifically says that an accountant does not have to be a bloodhound.
And N AXXXX said it was the results of investigations which would provide information to the Auditor that he in turn might investigate, not the data matching output.
Fudge and equivocation and self contradiction all over again?
Probably it will be as simple as that. O' Higgins comes up with a fudge, they accept it, end of end of end of?
Somebody from Scotland is speaking about transparency and accountability of auditors. LOL. Audit Scotland does not understand council tax discount law in Scotland! It thinks there is a sole occupancy discount and that you can tell by looking at the electoral register that a person appears not to be entitled to it. On this basis it believes that the electoral register is a document relating to the accounts of a council. The question is do the accounts present a true and fair account? But the electoral register cannot be used to show that this is or is not true. So Auditors should keep their hands of it where council tax discounts are concerned. IMHO.
What makes this more galling is that Audit Scotland told the Scottish Parliament that it matched data to identify actual inconsistencies and then wrote for itself a code of data matching practice which carefully removed all such requirements, which had existed in the previous code. This is another reason why I think DCLG staff are wrong when they say that a new code will contain the same definition as the old one. The Audit Bodies have already an existing code from which all such requirements appear to have been carefully and systematically expunged.
David Walker speaks about data assurance. LOL. How true it is that the quality of data needs to be assured, as within the NFI prejudicial if not downright libellous information is created and shared, Why does nobody think about ensuring the quality and accuracy about data relating to specific data subjects?
The Audit Commission says in its evidence
42 It is not clear what mechanism will be available to the new owner of the NFI to ensure that participants follow up data matches. The Commission currently uses its appointed auditors for this purpose.(Source: web site of Parliament)
This flatly contradicts what Nagina Akram said. She said it was the results of the investigations which were passed on to auditors, and that on that basis they might carry out their own investigations.
Once again, the Audit Commission produces misleading and self contradictory information. How can this body have gained and kept so much unaccountable and unchecked power?
This is a piece of very misleading text. The appointed auditors can comment on whether or not participants have followed up 'data matches'. They cannot 'ensure' that they do. But what the NFI neglected to say is that since matches may not show any evidence of any inconsistency or flaw with the accounts, there is nothing to follow up. What the NFI might mean is that auditors share its moral vision of a society in which auditors have the power to say 'he might be a thief, investigate him' on an evidence-free basis. But as usual, the text itself merely muddies the waters. You have to hand it to the Audit Commission, they are really good at using fuzzy language to persuade politicians without the time or inclination to look beyond the largely vacuous surface. This is another example of what some councils call the tendency of the Audit Commission to 'bully councils' and what others have called an interference with the right of councils to choose how to carry out discretionary duties in any way which they think to be reasonable.
Even the legal briefing produced for the NFI commented on certain practices being 'reasonable', but as we know the NFI, for whatever reason, appears unwilling to or incapable of taking what that lawyer said on board. Ever likely she left soon afterwards: who would want to work with such a body?
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Sunday, 28 October 2012
Northgate and maladministration and misinformation
http://www.northgate-ispublicservices.com/Literature/Files/Northgate-PS-Flyer-Single-Person-Discount-July-2012.pdf
This flier lists councils who have used Northgate (and Experian) for council tax purposes.
It starts with somewhat ludicrous figures, apparently provided by the National Fraud Authority, who would not it appears be able to recognise Section 11 of the Local Government Finance Act if it were copied out and sent to them and which usually gets its figures from the National Fraud Initiative whose misuse of statistics is well established. But the purposes here is rhetorical, to get the reader worked up by suggesting that there is a really really big problem. This time the figure is 100 million a year, in terms of people who 'could be wrongly claiming the discount'. The National Fraud Authority does not know how the discount should be 'claimed' and frequently praises councils which do the whole thing quite wrongly. But that suits Northgate, who are making money out of councils which do the wrong thing.
We can list some of these councils, as Northgate kindly provides their names.
York, Gedling, Kirklees, Croyden, and South Holland and East Lindsay.
The links below are links to inaccurate information and guidance on the web sites of the councils in question.
Gedling
Has misinformation built into the demand notice itself, listing both single person and non existent 'disregard discounts' on it. Generally Gedling appears to be trying to maintain some sort of council tax register and it provides inaccurate and misleading advice about the sorts of thing one has to report to the council. This is consistent with the false accounts of 'single person discounts' provided by Northgate and Experian.
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/counciltaxbenefits/yourbillexplained/counciltax/
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/counciltaxbenefits/counciltax/discountsexemptions/singlepersondiscount/
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/media/documents/counciltaxbenefits/Single%20Occupier%20Discount%20Application.pdf (signed by named council individual)
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/media/documents/counciltaxbenefits/School%20Leaver%20Disregard%20Application.pdf
Council tax demand notices: example of web site: not carrying out law properly. Not notifying the assumptions, and apparently not making them either.
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/media/documents/counciltaxbenefits/Council%20Tax%20Explanatory%20Notes%20201213.pdf
THIS LATTER IS A LEGAL DOCUMENT WHICH FAILS TO COMPLY WITH THE REQUIREMENTS UNDER THE REGULATIONS.
Kirklees
http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/you-kmc/payments/counciltax/councilTaxDiscounts.aspx#anchor2
http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/you-kmc/payments/counciltax/pdf/counciltaxdiscounts.pdf
Has someone moved into this address, meaning that you no longer qualify for a single persons discount?
Confuses disregard categories with discounts. Enough said on this council. Plainly putting misinformation into the public domain.
Croydon
Unusual council this: it can tell the difference between a disregard category and a discount, but it does provide misleading information. When councils do this it should be noted that they always err on the side of telling you you must provide third party information to them when in law it is not that simple or when it is plain wrong.
Croydon was of course one of the councils involved in the NFI pilots, and so it has it would appear been indulging in maladministration and injustice for longer than almost any other council in the country (See NFI steering committee briefing note for 2007). In 2007 it subjected over 7 thousand dwellings to fraud investigations, and nobody appears to have any evidence about how many of these investigations were utterly abortive in the sense that they found no actual inconsistency and there was full entitlement all the time.
http://www.e-lindsey.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/F9263066-69C8-40CF-AB5B-A394A5317E1D/0/Eastlindseycounciltax1213.pdf
This notice does give a clear list of people who are not counted when seeing how many people live in your house.
But from the web site we find this nonsense, with a typical threat just to scare people into providing information they have no duty to provide.
South Holland
Blatant and dangerous nonsense on web site
If you are given a discount and your circumstances change, the law says you have to tell us within 21 days. If you
This flier lists councils who have used Northgate (and Experian) for council tax purposes.
It starts with somewhat ludicrous figures, apparently provided by the National Fraud Authority, who would not it appears be able to recognise Section 11 of the Local Government Finance Act if it were copied out and sent to them and which usually gets its figures from the National Fraud Initiative whose misuse of statistics is well established. But the purposes here is rhetorical, to get the reader worked up by suggesting that there is a really really big problem. This time the figure is 100 million a year, in terms of people who 'could be wrongly claiming the discount'. The National Fraud Authority does not know how the discount should be 'claimed' and frequently praises councils which do the whole thing quite wrongly. But that suits Northgate, who are making money out of councils which do the wrong thing.
We can list some of these councils, as Northgate kindly provides their names.
York, Gedling, Kirklees, Croyden, and South Holland and East Lindsay.
The links below are links to inaccurate information and guidance on the web sites of the councils in question.
Gedling
Has misinformation built into the demand notice itself, listing both single person and non existent 'disregard discounts' on it. Generally Gedling appears to be trying to maintain some sort of council tax register and it provides inaccurate and misleading advice about the sorts of thing one has to report to the council. This is consistent with the false accounts of 'single person discounts' provided by Northgate and Experian.
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/counciltaxbenefits/yourbillexplained/counciltax/
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/counciltaxbenefits/counciltax/discountsexemptions/singlepersondiscount/
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/media/documents/counciltaxbenefits/Single%20Occupier%20Discount%20Application.pdf (signed by named council individual)
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/media/documents/counciltaxbenefits/School%20Leaver%20Disregard%20Application.pdf
Council tax demand notices: example of web site: not carrying out law properly. Not notifying the assumptions, and apparently not making them either.
http://www.gedling.gov.uk/media/documents/counciltaxbenefits/Council%20Tax%20Explanatory%20Notes%20201213.pdf
THIS LATTER IS A LEGAL DOCUMENT WHICH FAILS TO COMPLY WITH THE REQUIREMENTS UNDER THE REGULATIONS.
Kirklees
http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/you-kmc/payments/counciltax/councilTaxDiscounts.aspx#anchor2
http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/you-kmc/payments/counciltax/pdf/counciltaxdiscounts.pdf
Has someone moved into this address, meaning that you no longer qualify for a single persons discount?
Confuses disregard categories with discounts. Enough said on this council. Plainly putting misinformation into the public domain.
Croydon
Unusual council this: it can tell the difference between a disregard category and a discount, but it does provide misleading information. When councils do this it should be noted that they always err on the side of telling you you must provide third party information to them when in law it is not that simple or when it is plain wrong.
Croydon was of course one of the councils involved in the NFI pilots, and so it has it would appear been indulging in maladministration and injustice for longer than almost any other council in the country (See NFI steering committee briefing note for 2007). In 2007 it subjected over 7 thousand dwellings to fraud investigations, and nobody appears to have any evidence about how many of these investigations were utterly abortive in the sense that they found no actual inconsistency and there was full entitlement all the time.
Do I have to tell someone if I am a 'disregarded' person or if someone living with me is 'disregarded' person?
You need to tell us about the 'disregarded' persons living with you if:
- you want to claim a discount
- You can only get this discount if you live alone
There is no excuse for putting this sort of nonsense on your web site.
South Holland and East Lindsay
http://www.e-lindsey.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/F9263066-69C8-40CF-AB5B-A394A5317E1D/0/Eastlindseycounciltax1213.pdf
This notice does give a clear list of people who are not counted when seeing how many people live in your house.
But from the web site we find this nonsense, with a typical threat just to scare people into providing information they have no duty to provide.
Change in circumstances
You must tell us within 21 days if there is a change that might affect your Council Tax discount.
We can impose a £70 penalty on you if you do not tell us about a change.
South Holland
Blatant and dangerous nonsense on web site
If you are given a discount and your circumstances change, the law says you have to tell us within 21 days. If you
don’t, we can impose a financial penalty. Telling other parts of the Council (such as completing the electoral
registration form) is not enough unless you tell them the information is for council tax as well.
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Where's the evidence for fraud and theft accusations
Where's the evidence? This is the whole point. There IS no evidence.
http://www.lutonlibdems.org.uk/2008/03/wheres-the-evidence-for-fraud-and-theft-accusations/
And even the outraged Liberal Democrats miss the point that this is NOT a discount literally just for people who live alone. One can have a number of disregarded residents and these will not be 'undeclared'.
One could have guessed that Experian Ltd of Nottingham was behind this nonsense as the whole thing smacks of the misunderstanding of the law evident in the practices of council which buy into their products.
http://www.lutonlibdems.org.uk/2008/03/wheres-the-evidence-for-fraud-and-theft-accusations/
And even the outraged Liberal Democrats miss the point that this is NOT a discount literally just for people who live alone. One can have a number of disregarded residents and these will not be 'undeclared'.
One could have guessed that Experian Ltd of Nottingham was behind this nonsense as the whole thing smacks of the misunderstanding of the law evident in the practices of council which buy into their products.
Luton Council has sent a letter to 4,000 residents suggesting they may be guilty of fraud or theft and is refusing residents’ requests for details of the evidence. The letter was addressed to people claiming single person discount on their Council Tax and Liberal Democrat councillors are complaining that the Council is refusing to explain what evidence they have for the suggestion.
Residents who live alone are entitled to a 25% discount on their Council Tax and the letter has been sent to around 4,000 people who have claimed the discount.
The letter says the Council has ‘carried out a number of checks in conjunction with an external agency and, as a result, there is evidence to suggest that there may be, or may have been, one or more additional undeclared adult residents living at your address.’
It asks the recipients to contact the Town Hall within 14 days or risk losing their discount then goes on to point out that if they knowingly supply false information they may be prosecuted for Fraud or Theft and that this could result in a criminal record.
“Residents who have contacted me are being told they should contact Experian, the credit reference agency who supplied the Council with the information,” says Liberal Democrat councillor David Franks.
“This is really not an acceptable response. It leaves honest people who pay their taxes accused by the Council of being criminals and denies them access to the evidence. Law abiding citizens should not be called upon to prove their innocence.”
Friday, 26 October 2012
O'Higgins to give evidence to Parliament
Michael O'Higgins, ex chairman of the Audit Commission, is to give evidence to the ad hoc committee on the draft local audit bill. One can only hope that he will be asked to explain why for years the Audit Commission has been providing false information to local council audit teams to the effect that if a person is receiving a single person discount when more than one adult is on the electoral register either the register or the discount is being wrongly claimed, and why the NFI appears unable to grasp the contents of the Audit Commission Legal Services legal briefing on council tax administrative law.
Will they ask him if he saw the letter from Bob Neill, alleged by the DCLG to have been sent to the Commission and (probably to the chair?) and whether or not he agrees with what Bob Neill said in it?
Also giving evidence is a person linked with Hackney.
Hackney appear to be trying to maintain a council tax register and provide confusing information about what you have to tell the council, including if any person turns 18. Not necessarily true but they tell you to tell them.
The reason appears to be that this is another council which believes that there is a single person discount and also a number of different 'disregard discounts'.
Not much hope there then. A person from a council getting it wrong is unlikely to be able to explain how it should be done to the ad hoc sub committee
Will they ask him if he saw the letter from Bob Neill, alleged by the DCLG to have been sent to the Commission and (probably to the chair?) and whether or not he agrees with what Bob Neill said in it?
Also giving evidence is a person linked with Hackney.
Hackney appear to be trying to maintain a council tax register and provide confusing information about what you have to tell the council, including if any person turns 18. Not necessarily true but they tell you to tell them.
The reason appears to be that this is another council which believes that there is a single person discount and also a number of different 'disregard discounts'.
Not much hope there then. A person from a council getting it wrong is unlikely to be able to explain how it should be done to the ad hoc sub committee
West Berkshire. One of the worst with false information about what is 'criminal'.
This pile of nonsense speaks for itself. Another council which confuses disregard categories with discounts, and says you cannot be entitled to a 'single person discount' when another adult is resident. I think you have to be utterly stupid to make this mistake.
Needless to say this pile of rubbish gets praised by government agencies which should know better, including the National Fraud Authority, who make the Audit Commission look something like sensible. At least the Audit Commission employs lawyers, even if they appear to ignore them when convenient.
http://www.westberks.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=20998&p=0
Needless to say this pile of rubbish gets praised by government agencies which should know better, including the National Fraud Authority, who make the Audit Commission look something like sensible. At least the Audit Commission employs lawyers, even if they appear to ignore them when convenient.
http://www.westberks.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=20998&p=0
11Discounts.
(1)The amount of council tax payable in respect of any chargeable dwelling and any day shall be subject to a discount equal to the appropriate percentage of that amount if on that day—
(a)there is only one resident of the dwelling and he does not fall to be disregarded for the purposes of discount; or
(b)there are two or more residents of the dwelling and each of them except one falls to be disregarded for those purposes.
(3)In this section F2... “the appropriate percentage” means 25 per cent. or, if the Secretary of State by order so provides in relation to the financial year in which the day falls, such other percentage as is specified in the order.
(4)No order under subsection (3) above shall be made unless a draft of the order has been laid before and approved by resolution of the House of Commons.
(5)Schedule 1 to this Act shall have effect for determining who shall be disregarded for the purposes of discount.
Appalling Standards in Council tax Adminstration. Parliament has been told
- FROM HANSARD
- (Citation: HL Deb, 22 October 2012, c48)
BARONESS MEACHER, MOVING AMENDMENT NUMBER 6
She claims that provisions will tend to criminalise 'innocent people'.
The people who may find themselves charged with an offence will be single and vulnerable people entitled to a discount assessed on the basis of their circumstances.
Well that is a surprise.
If Clause 13 of the Bill is passed without our amendments, council tax payers who are unaware of Regulations 3, 10 and 11-surely nearly all of us-and who therefore fail to act in accordance with them become potentially liable to a criminal prosecution.
This matter is even more serious as many councils cannot accurately state which assumptions one is supposed to correct.
Alan Murdie, a barrister who edited the CPAG handbook on council tax for 14 years and who has kindly briefed me for this debate, is concerned that this situation will be made worse because the standards of administration of council tax are apparently worse than at any time in the past 20 years. He is well placed to make that judgment. At best, says Alan Murdie, people will be pursued in error and, at worst-I must say that this shocked me, but I trust this person who deals with these situations all the time-the provisions will be used to extort money from people by unscrupulous officials. Mr Murdie says:
"The council tax is the most complicated local taxation system ever devised. Even after 20 years many aspects of the tax are unclear and open to argument and errors are rife throughout the system. The council tax has gone beyond what ordinary members of the public can understand".
Generally many points to Baroness Hollis, but she backed down when one might have felt she kept to her point.
Lord McKenzie of Luton, who spoke in the Lords debate, would appear to be a good person to lobby on Audit Commission misrepresentation as he has been an accountant and worked at the Dept for Communities.
Baroness Hanham who also spoke works a lot in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which already puts misinfomation about council tax out, and would therefore benefit from some independent review of its practices, of the general sort which the amendment was suggesting, perhaps. In fact she used to be on this council.
Lord Tope is linked with the London Borough of Sutton. No immediate information on whether it currently complies with CT discount administration. Frequent reference to a 25% 'single person discount' and proposals to cut it, apparently because this would help to avoid additional taxes on the poorest.
The government denies that the provisions are intended to apply to individuals. One would have to check carefully to see whether what the provisions say corresponds with what the government says about them, as we have seen that often people draft legislation and tell the government something about it and when it is passed they claim that the law says something completely different.
Generally many points to Baroness Hollis, but she backed down when one might have felt she kept to her point.
Lord McKenzie of Luton, who spoke in the Lords debate, would appear to be a good person to lobby on Audit Commission misrepresentation as he has been an accountant and worked at the Dept for Communities.
Baroness Hanham who also spoke works a lot in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which already puts misinfomation about council tax out, and would therefore benefit from some independent review of its practices, of the general sort which the amendment was suggesting, perhaps. In fact she used to be on this council.
Lord Tope is linked with the London Borough of Sutton. No immediate information on whether it currently complies with CT discount administration. Frequent reference to a 25% 'single person discount' and proposals to cut it, apparently because this would help to avoid additional taxes on the poorest.
The government denies that the provisions are intended to apply to individuals. One would have to check carefully to see whether what the provisions say corresponds with what the government says about them, as we have seen that often people draft legislation and tell the government something about it and when it is passed they claim that the law says something completely different.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
CIPFA contradicting itself
A person calling themselves Tim Windle posted this on the Guardian Comment pages:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/local-government-network/2012/jul/05/soundbites-from-cipfa-conference
CIPFA acknowledges that data matching and the single person discount is a complicated legal area. It should be recognised that the use of data matching, including the use of electoral roles is merely a starting point that can be used to narrow the sample size for fraud detection purposes. As you have pointed out, the single person discount applies where there is only one person in a household liable for council tax meaning that the existence of more than one person living at an address does not necessarily indicate fraud. It is for this reason that data matching relies on a number of data sources and is only one tool local authorities use to focus their fraud investigations.
This question also arose at a workshop on fraud during the conference. The respondent said that his authority had sought a legal opinion and that although the law is complicated in this area it had concluded that they had powers to use data for the detection of fraud.
In that case CIPFA ought not to have put its name on a document stating that library records if up to date were reliable guides to entitlement to a single person discount.
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Where Clive Lewis Possibly Goes Wrong or is probably misleading. And does he or does he not know what 'but' means?
RE COUNCIL TAX AND ELECTORAL REGISTER DATA
Dated November 27th 2007
Clive Lewis asserts that the council data available to the auditor will include
The information sought in this instance will contain the unique council tax reference
for an individual, a unique property reference number and the full name, address
and date of birth of individuals residing at the address and liable to pay council
tax, including information about whether or not the individual is claiming that he
or she is eligible to receive discounts from the full council tax normally payable.
No it won't.
First of all, it won't because the council will not have information about individuals residing at the address and liable to pay council tax. It may have it for some addresses: it will not have it for all addresses, and why should it?
Mr Lewis is unclear here about which 'discounts' (plural) he is referring to. In other parts of his opinion he uses the phrase 'sole occupant discount', a misleading term which does not appear anywhere in the law. When Mr Lewis uses the word 'but' in a context where more than one adult is on the electoral register this implies that he has been instructed that the persons in questions are claiming to be entitled to a 25% discount on the basis that they live alone. This belief is completely incorrect and it flies in the face of council tax discount law.
No individual whose data is used for this exercise is claiming to be eligible for 'discounts' (plural). The information does not include copies of any claims. The exercise relates to just one 'discount' - a discount of the appropriate amount under Section 11(1) of the Act, which has been awarded on the basis that the same amount of discount will apply on every day of the coming tax year.
One has to ask whether Mr Lewis came up with these ideas himself or whether it was part of his instructions.
For it is clear that way before the date of his opinion the NFI Audit Guide was getting the law wrong. And in doing this it blames, no, sorry, that should be 'thanks', Hillingdon, the incorrectness of whose practices needs no rehearsal here. They did the data mining in June 2006, and three more councils followed suit that October.
So the more you think about it, the more it seems more likely than not that Clive Lewis was issued with legally incorrect instructions and that, perhaps reasonably, perhaps not - given the degree of controversy, he did not bother to check them out. He was not asked for a briefing on how councils must by law adminster the discount, after all. He would not have been the first to take what the NFI said at face value: this almost appears to be something that the Audit Commission trades on.
More evidence for the belief that Clive Lewis was working with misleading instructions comes in the Audit Guide for the SPD roll out dated 2006/2007. This predates his opinion by some months.
It states that in certain cases selected for 'matching' there is no ambiguity about the reason for the discount, an utter piece of nonsense which the Audit Commission's own legal briefing has utterly demolished in a message which has still not yet got through to all Audit Commission staff. There is no legal requirement for the council to know on a day to day basis the reasons why the discount applies, and no legal power for the Audit Commission to use data matching to force councils to carry out their duties under Regulation 14 in particular ways.
Dubious statistics
Clive Lewis appears not to be a statistician or to have checked what the 'pilots' actually showed in terms of money. If he describes his 'instructions' accurately, they were themselves misleading and biased.
This information is being required in the context of the National Fraud Initiative.
In brief, pilot schemes in London have demonstrated that a large amount of
revenue (in the region of £50-100 million pounds annually) is being lost by local
authorities.
In brief, pilot schemes have demonstrated no such thing.
The actual claim made in briefing note dated April 2007, and signed by Peter Yetzes, was that using particular methods, you could categorise very large numbers of discounts as 'questionable', and on this basis the NFI make a guess about how much money nationally 'could' be being lost to fraud.
The figure given by Mr Yetzes at that time (2007) was over 100 million nationally.
And it is clear that Mr Yetzes was working on the basis of false beliefs about how council tax discounts work.
For that briefing note falsely asserts, in line with a number of audit guides produced since, that the discounts in question are being called 'questionable' on the basis that the electoral register suggests that there might be more than one resident. But it is perfectly legal to be in receipt of an SPD when more than one adult is resident.
How can such an inaccurate use of electoral register information be done 'in accordance with the law'. The whole argument is not 'in accordance with the law' ie council tax law: it was at odds with it.
But the briefing note says
We have so far restricted this initiative to unambiguous matching i.e. where the SPD applicant has declared there to be nobody over 18 in the household.
This is not true. The NFI has been told a number of times by lawyers in different contexts that this is not true, but appears not to have taken the message on board. Whether this is deliberate or not is an open question.
Given how many of these additional voters were disregarded, and some will have had their sole or main residence elsewhere, the bare figures in terms of questionable discounts are highly misleading. Such evidence as is available suggests that the majority of people highlighted as 'questionable' using this method are in fact fully entitled, and are not making any false or misleading claim. The misleading claims here emanate from the NFI.
It is incorrect to assert that the pilot schemes showed that anything like this was being lost nationally. If Mr Lewis was told that this was the case, then whoever instructed him was not doing a very good job of it. Remember that the so-called 'evidence' relied on in coming to these figures is the mere presence of a second adult of the electoral register. This does not indicate lack of entitlement, or any maladministration by the council, or a failure to declare changes in circumstances which the law requires the taxpayer to tell the council tax department about, and so it is bad statistics as well as bad reasoning and bad law to jump to the conclusion that numbers of 'hits' equate in any way to lost revenue, leave alone lost revenue.
Given that NFI documents dating from before the date of Clive Lewis's report contain legally inaccurate assertions about how council tax discounts work, there is a clear prima facie case that he was instructed on the basis of incorrect beliefs about this whole matter
The Optimal Time
This is the time of year at which the highest possible number of abortive investigations based on a false suspicion that the additional adult is not disregarded will occur. A lot of new residents, including newly adult residents will be included on the newly canvassed register.
If you want lots of abortive investigations into innocent law abiding families, yes, this is the optimum time. This is clear evidence that Mr Lewis's instructions were problematic, and it strongly suggests that he did not bother to check the law underpinning them. Or else he is simply very relaxed about thousands of entitled people being labelled as potential fraud cases when there is not one shred of evidence. But on the evidence of his own opinion, the former appears to be the correct explanation.
Paragraph 2.3(e) and (f) provide that “wherever practicable”,
information that data may be disclosed for auditing purposes in order to identify
possible cases of fraud should be given to the data subject prior to the initial
collection of the data.
This is the nub of Mr Lewis's argument. He wants to argue that an auditor can obtain and use the electoral register and this is what he says the auditor can use it for.
The provision of the electoral roll and council tax records for a particular local
authority will enable the appointed auditor for that authority to match or compare
the two sources of data. The electoral register may indicate, for example, that
there is more than one person living in a particular property but the council tax
records may show that the person liable for paying council tax is claiming the
single occupant discount.
Here we run into the problem that the NFI data matching expert has asserted in writing that when Clive wrote 'but' here what he said/meant was 'and'.
For it is perfectly legal to be in receipt of a discount when more than one adult is resident. So we are left unclear about what Mr Lewis meant by this paragraph as the same expert has said that he chose his words very carefully. Does or does not a senior barrister grasp the plain difference between the words 'and' and 'but'? If not, then perhaps the Commission should have consulted somebody else.
The best way to look at the problems presented by this is to ask what a sensible barrister with some sense of social conscience might have done if presented with the briefing notes and the audit guide and asked to advise on their legal accuracy and the consequences for the NFI of them being wrong. I suppose that if asked for legal advice on a personal basis by a responsible person, he might have told them simply to shut up and hope nobody asked them any awkward questions.
On this basis, I believe that Clive Lewis was not aware that his opinion would be used as the basis for arguments by Audit Scotland and the NFI to the effect that there is something called a sole occupant discount and you can tell by looking at the electoral register that the accounts are wrong, which is the central thrust of his whole advice.
But he must know by now, and one could consider he has a duty since the opinion has been put on the web site of Parliament and used as a campaigning tool by the NFI, to put the matter right.
Unless Clive Lewis believes that it is lawful for auditors to carry out statistically based fishing trips in search of fraud which is what this is: it is one fishing trip inside another, or as somebody from CIPFA put it recently, a way of limiting the sample size in one's pro-active search for fraud.
But I doubt this because in the same opinion Clive Lewis sets out the powers and duties of auditors, including those auditing the accounts of councils. And this says exactly the opposite. In fact his whole argument only makes sense if you take it that he falsely believes that there is something called a 'sole occupant discount' which only those living literally alone can claim and that the electoral register as near as dammit shows lack of entitlement.
If you read his opinion in the light of the facts of council tax discount law, what he is saying is that auditors may not have access to the full electoral register. Because they cannot tell from it that a council is failing in a duty to obey the law on the financial side of things, or that revenue has been foregone.
I think this opinion may explain the tendency evident on council web sites to describe disregard categories as 'discounts' when, clearly, they are disregard categories existing within the provisions setting out one discount. For it mentions 'discounts' and refers to the sole occupant discount as if it were one of these.
This may explain the fact that Scotland, where Audit Scotland used Clive Lewis's opinion as a lobbying tool, is even fuller of councils falsely asserting that you cannot be entitled to a single person discount when more than one adult is resident. Edinburgh is a good example and Experian is involved in this one.
Dated November 27th 2007
Clive Lewis asserts that the council data available to the auditor will include
The information sought in this instance will contain the unique council tax reference
for an individual, a unique property reference number and the full name, address
and date of birth of individuals residing at the address and liable to pay council
tax, including information about whether or not the individual is claiming that he
or she is eligible to receive discounts from the full council tax normally payable.
No it won't.
First of all, it won't because the council will not have information about individuals residing at the address and liable to pay council tax. It may have it for some addresses: it will not have it for all addresses, and why should it?
Mr Lewis is unclear here about which 'discounts' (plural) he is referring to. In other parts of his opinion he uses the phrase 'sole occupant discount', a misleading term which does not appear anywhere in the law. When Mr Lewis uses the word 'but' in a context where more than one adult is on the electoral register this implies that he has been instructed that the persons in questions are claiming to be entitled to a 25% discount on the basis that they live alone. This belief is completely incorrect and it flies in the face of council tax discount law.
No individual whose data is used for this exercise is claiming to be eligible for 'discounts' (plural). The information does not include copies of any claims. The exercise relates to just one 'discount' - a discount of the appropriate amount under Section 11(1) of the Act, which has been awarded on the basis that the same amount of discount will apply on every day of the coming tax year.
One has to ask whether Mr Lewis came up with these ideas himself or whether it was part of his instructions.
For it is clear that way before the date of his opinion the NFI Audit Guide was getting the law wrong. And in doing this it blames, no, sorry, that should be 'thanks', Hillingdon, the incorrectness of whose practices needs no rehearsal here. They did the data mining in June 2006, and three more councils followed suit that October.
So the more you think about it, the more it seems more likely than not that Clive Lewis was issued with legally incorrect instructions and that, perhaps reasonably, perhaps not - given the degree of controversy, he did not bother to check them out. He was not asked for a briefing on how councils must by law adminster the discount, after all. He would not have been the first to take what the NFI said at face value: this almost appears to be something that the Audit Commission trades on.
More evidence for the belief that Clive Lewis was working with misleading instructions comes in the Audit Guide for the SPD roll out dated 2006/2007. This predates his opinion by some months.
It states that in certain cases selected for 'matching' there is no ambiguity about the reason for the discount, an utter piece of nonsense which the Audit Commission's own legal briefing has utterly demolished in a message which has still not yet got through to all Audit Commission staff. There is no legal requirement for the council to know on a day to day basis the reasons why the discount applies, and no legal power for the Audit Commission to use data matching to force councils to carry out their duties under Regulation 14 in particular ways.
Dubious statistics
Clive Lewis appears not to be a statistician or to have checked what the 'pilots' actually showed in terms of money. If he describes his 'instructions' accurately, they were themselves misleading and biased.
This information is being required in the context of the National Fraud Initiative.
In brief, pilot schemes in London have demonstrated that a large amount of
revenue (in the region of £50-100 million pounds annually) is being lost by local
authorities.
In brief, pilot schemes have demonstrated no such thing.
The actual claim made in briefing note dated April 2007, and signed by Peter Yetzes, was that using particular methods, you could categorise very large numbers of discounts as 'questionable', and on this basis the NFI make a guess about how much money nationally 'could' be being lost to fraud.
The figure given by Mr Yetzes at that time (2007) was over 100 million nationally.
And it is clear that Mr Yetzes was working on the basis of false beliefs about how council tax discounts work.
For that briefing note falsely asserts, in line with a number of audit guides produced since, that the discounts in question are being called 'questionable' on the basis that the electoral register suggests that there might be more than one resident. But it is perfectly legal to be in receipt of an SPD when more than one adult is resident.
How can such an inaccurate use of electoral register information be done 'in accordance with the law'. The whole argument is not 'in accordance with the law' ie council tax law: it was at odds with it.
But the briefing note says
We have so far restricted this initiative to unambiguous matching i.e. where the SPD applicant has declared there to be nobody over 18 in the household.
This is not true. The NFI has been told a number of times by lawyers in different contexts that this is not true, but appears not to have taken the message on board. Whether this is deliberate or not is an open question.
Given how many of these additional voters were disregarded, and some will have had their sole or main residence elsewhere, the bare figures in terms of questionable discounts are highly misleading. Such evidence as is available suggests that the majority of people highlighted as 'questionable' using this method are in fact fully entitled, and are not making any false or misleading claim. The misleading claims here emanate from the NFI.
It is incorrect to assert that the pilot schemes showed that anything like this was being lost nationally. If Mr Lewis was told that this was the case, then whoever instructed him was not doing a very good job of it. Remember that the so-called 'evidence' relied on in coming to these figures is the mere presence of a second adult of the electoral register. This does not indicate lack of entitlement, or any maladministration by the council, or a failure to declare changes in circumstances which the law requires the taxpayer to tell the council tax department about, and so it is bad statistics as well as bad reasoning and bad law to jump to the conclusion that numbers of 'hits' equate in any way to lost revenue, leave alone lost revenue.
Given that NFI documents dating from before the date of Clive Lewis's report contain legally inaccurate assertions about how council tax discounts work, there is a clear prima facie case that he was instructed on the basis of incorrect beliefs about this whole matter
The Optimal Time
I am also instructed that the optimum time for comparison of data from the full electoral register and the council tax records is when the electoral register is re-published in December each year.
Thus, for this financial year, the optimum time for comparison is December 2007.
If you want lots of abortive investigations into innocent law abiding families, yes, this is the optimum time. This is clear evidence that Mr Lewis's instructions were problematic, and it strongly suggests that he did not bother to check the law underpinning them. Or else he is simply very relaxed about thousands of entitled people being labelled as potential fraud cases when there is not one shred of evidence. But on the evidence of his own opinion, the former appears to be the correct explanation.
Possible Cases of Fraud
Paragraph 2.3(e) and (f) provide that “wherever practicable”,
information that data may be disclosed for auditing purposes in order to identify
possible cases of fraud should be given to the data subject prior to the initial
collection of the data.
Since the NFI denies that this exercise labels people as being in inconsistent situations, leave alone as potential frauds, this comment is in law irrelevant. But since Mr Lewis says it, I think it is possibly true.
Odd that since having a legal briefing on council tax the NFI has taken to denying that the hit lists are lists of 'possible cases of fraud', and even to denying that there is any requirement that all cases should be possible cases of fraud (except if they drafted the explanatory notes to the draft local audit bill, in which case they need their knuckles rapping for misleading Parliament). So here we have in effect evidence from a senior lawyer that the Audit Commission has been pack pedaling and contradicting itself.
The Single Occupant Discount which does not exist.
The provision of the electoral roll and council tax records for a particular local
authority will enable the appointed auditor for that authority to match or compare
the two sources of data. The electoral register may indicate, for example, that
there is more than one person living in a particular property but the council tax
records may show that the person liable for paying council tax is claiming the
single occupant discount.
Here we run into the problem that the NFI data matching expert has asserted in writing that when Clive wrote 'but' here what he said/meant was 'and'.
For it is perfectly legal to be in receipt of a discount when more than one adult is resident. So we are left unclear about what Mr Lewis meant by this paragraph as the same expert has said that he chose his words very carefully. Does or does not a senior barrister grasp the plain difference between the words 'and' and 'but'? If not, then perhaps the Commission should have consulted somebody else.
The best way to look at the problems presented by this is to ask what a sensible barrister with some sense of social conscience might have done if presented with the briefing notes and the audit guide and asked to advise on their legal accuracy and the consequences for the NFI of them being wrong. I suppose that if asked for legal advice on a personal basis by a responsible person, he might have told them simply to shut up and hope nobody asked them any awkward questions.
On this basis, I believe that Clive Lewis was not aware that his opinion would be used as the basis for arguments by Audit Scotland and the NFI to the effect that there is something called a sole occupant discount and you can tell by looking at the electoral register that the accounts are wrong, which is the central thrust of his whole advice.
But he must know by now, and one could consider he has a duty since the opinion has been put on the web site of Parliament and used as a campaigning tool by the NFI, to put the matter right.
Unless Clive Lewis believes that it is lawful for auditors to carry out statistically based fishing trips in search of fraud which is what this is: it is one fishing trip inside another, or as somebody from CIPFA put it recently, a way of limiting the sample size in one's pro-active search for fraud.
But I doubt this because in the same opinion Clive Lewis sets out the powers and duties of auditors, including those auditing the accounts of councils. And this says exactly the opposite. In fact his whole argument only makes sense if you take it that he falsely believes that there is something called a 'sole occupant discount' which only those living literally alone can claim and that the electoral register as near as dammit shows lack of entitlement.
If you read his opinion in the light of the facts of council tax discount law, what he is saying is that auditors may not have access to the full electoral register. Because they cannot tell from it that a council is failing in a duty to obey the law on the financial side of things, or that revenue has been foregone.
I think this opinion may explain the tendency evident on council web sites to describe disregard categories as 'discounts' when, clearly, they are disregard categories existing within the provisions setting out one discount. For it mentions 'discounts' and refers to the sole occupant discount as if it were one of these.
This may explain the fact that Scotland, where Audit Scotland used Clive Lewis's opinion as a lobbying tool, is even fuller of councils falsely asserting that you cannot be entitled to a single person discount when more than one adult is resident. Edinburgh is a good example and Experian is involved in this one.
Warwick Council: idiocy on council tax discount web site
'Some fraud of course, will be unintentional and we will consider each case based on its own merits'
This statement from Warwick's web site is ridiculous. Unintentional fraud.
It looks very likely that the contents of Warwick's web page is a garbled version of some of the NFI related nonsense about discounts. For the NFI is fond of saying that there should be no assumption as to whether a MATCH arises from fraud or error until there has been an investigation, neatly, but falsely implying that only one of these two explanations is possible. There is of course a third explanation, that the 'match' in question is an example of NFI data mining ie the use of computing to produce lists of cases where there 'might' on statistical or a priori grounds be an inconsistency.
It will be interesting to see whether Blogging Warwick's mistakes leads them to change this nonsense.
This statement from Warwick's web site is ridiculous. Unintentional fraud.
It looks very likely that the contents of Warwick's web page is a garbled version of some of the NFI related nonsense about discounts. For the NFI is fond of saying that there should be no assumption as to whether a MATCH arises from fraud or error until there has been an investigation, neatly, but falsely implying that only one of these two explanations is possible. There is of course a third explanation, that the 'match' in question is an example of NFI data mining ie the use of computing to produce lists of cases where there 'might' on statistical or a priori grounds be an inconsistency.
It will be interesting to see whether Blogging Warwick's mistakes leads them to change this nonsense.
Darlington Misinformation single person discount review Experian
http://www.darlington.gov.uk/Advice%20and%20Benefits/Council%20Tax/singlepersonreview.htm
Another council misrepresenting the position of the taxpayer, and, therefore, misusing the electoral register.
A number of legal mistakes and omissions in this particular one, but it does make the statistical nature of what Experian is doing clear.
It is appalling that this web page has 'advice' on its URL. Councils should give clear and fair advice but council after council has ignored the lessons learned in the Lancashire pilots and continues to put out inaccurate information.
Another council misrepresenting the position of the taxpayer, and, therefore, misusing the electoral register.
A number of legal mistakes and omissions in this particular one, but it does make the statistical nature of what Experian is doing clear.
It is appalling that this web page has 'advice' on its URL. Councils should give clear and fair advice but council after council has ignored the lessons learned in the Lancashire pilots and continues to put out inaccurate information.
Sunday, 21 October 2012
council tax discount reviews Edinburghnonsense on web site
Some Scottish councils are putting out information even more wildly wrong than English ones.
There is ample documentary evidence that Audit Scotland is responsible for this. Audit Scotland provide documents supplied to them by the Audit Commission in support of precisely such nonsense. Yet Nagina Akram of the Audit Commission doesn't believe that the term 'single person discount' cause any misunderstanding. It does, and the Audit Commission is very largely to blame for this.
The following nonsense comes from Edinburgh Council Web Site.
I feel that somebody ought to get sacked for putting this online, and if it reflects what the council is doing more than one person ought to get sacked. There is probably nothing at all 'legal' about using Experian's information for this purpose; maladministration cannot by definition be in accordance with the law.
There is ample documentary evidence that Audit Scotland is responsible for this. Audit Scotland provide documents supplied to them by the Audit Commission in support of precisely such nonsense. Yet Nagina Akram of the Audit Commission doesn't believe that the term 'single person discount' cause any misunderstanding. It does, and the Audit Commission is very largely to blame for this.
The following nonsense comes from Edinburgh Council Web Site.
I feel that somebody ought to get sacked for putting this online, and if it reflects what the council is doing more than one person ought to get sacked. There is probably nothing at all 'legal' about using Experian's information for this purpose; maladministration cannot by definition be in accordance with the law.
Council tax discounts
Single person's discount checks
- Previous page
- Page 2 of 2
Do you currently claim single person's discount on your Council tax? We are carrying out checks to make sure the 25% discount on Council tax bill is given only those entitled to it.
This is one of a number of initiatives we are carrying out to ensure that the right people are getting the discounts and benefits due to them. It also helps us to improve Council tax collection so that we have more money to improve services for you.
How the checks are carried out
The Council is using Experian to compare details of properties where single person discount is being claimed with other information to check if there seems to be more than one person living at any address. When information shows there may be more than one person living at an address we will send a form to check the details.
If the details returned confirms a person is no longer living alone, the discount will be stopped and you will have to pay back any money that was due for the time you were claiming incorrectly. We will also investigate further where the checks show more than one person living at an address but this is disputed by the person claiming the discount.
enfield, misinformation about council tax discounts
You must tell us of any change
of circumstances which may affect your
entitlement to a discount.
Untrue assertion from Enfield's council tax information leaflet, also available on line.
Saturday, 20 October 2012
if these are the best the others must be rubbish
A puff for Experian from Northgate
And some very dangerous and prejudicial waffle. This expresson 'verify the eligibility of claims' appears to be another version of the 'they are claiming to be entitled on the basis that they live alone' nonsense. Given that the expression is bad English and utterly unclear as well as legal nonsense, somebody appears not to be up to IRRV standards at any NVQ level.
Established partnership with Experian;providing the most sophisticated and accurate reporting of occupancy status and entitlement in the market
And some very dangerous and prejudicial waffle. This expresson 'verify the eligibility of claims' appears to be another version of the 'they are claiming to be entitled on the basis that they live alone' nonsense. Given that the expression is bad English and utterly unclear as well as legal nonsense, somebody appears not to be up to IRRV standards at any NVQ level.
We take complete ownership of the process,utilising sophisticated data and our experienced team to verify the eligibility of claims, accurately identifying and targeting possible fraud and reducing avoidable contact – delivering certainty that fraud reduction and financial gain is maximised.
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Misinformation.
Change In Circumstances - A penalty of up to £70 may be imposed if you do not tell us about changes in your circumstances which affect the calculation of the Council Tax bill after receiving it. An example would be where you are claiming a single person discount and another person has moved in with you.
Even the Audit Commission isn't coming out with this particular one at the moment.
Even the Audit Commission isn't coming out with this particular one at the moment.
croyden single person discount review northgate
Croyden is carrying out a review of a discount which does not exist, paying Northgate to do it and putting utterly misleading information on its web site.
It contains a relatively new twist on an old load of nonsense.
Croyden says:
You cannot get this discount if you live with disregarded adults.
Rubbish: the discount is a discount of the appropriate amount and it applies on any day when only one countable adult has his or her sole or main residence at the dwelling
Where there appears to be a discrepancy a review for will be sent. Once again the old nonsense about discrepancies with a discount which does not exist.
From Croyden's web site it seems fairly cut and dried it is not applying regulation 15 or 20.
It is not surprising that it says Northgate understood local procedures, Northgate works with Experian and both routinely provide misleading and prejudicial PR material about how these exercises work. Nought out of ten for Croyden.
If you get a review form, you could simply write back and tell them you confirm you continue to be entitled to a discount of the appropriate amount and if they issue a backdated demand notice you will exercise your right of appeal to a valuation tribunal. And then send the letter to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Croyden also have a lot of nonsense about updating your account on the web site. There is no requirement for a council tax register.
Unless you are a thief, which is statistically unlikely in which case I have no sympathy.
http://www.croydon.gov.uk/advice/counciltax/reductions/spddiscount
http://www.croydon.gov.uk/advice/counciltax/reductions/counciltax-spd-review
It contains a relatively new twist on an old load of nonsense.
Croyden says:
You cannot get this discount if you live with disregarded adults.
Rubbish: the discount is a discount of the appropriate amount and it applies on any day when only one countable adult has his or her sole or main residence at the dwelling
Where there appears to be a discrepancy a review for will be sent. Once again the old nonsense about discrepancies with a discount which does not exist.
From Croyden's web site it seems fairly cut and dried it is not applying regulation 15 or 20.
It is not surprising that it says Northgate understood local procedures, Northgate works with Experian and both routinely provide misleading and prejudicial PR material about how these exercises work. Nought out of ten for Croyden.
If you get a review form, you could simply write back and tell them you confirm you continue to be entitled to a discount of the appropriate amount and if they issue a backdated demand notice you will exercise your right of appeal to a valuation tribunal. And then send the letter to the Local Government Ombudsman.
Croyden also have a lot of nonsense about updating your account on the web site. There is no requirement for a council tax register.
Unless you are a thief, which is statistically unlikely in which case I have no sympathy.
http://www.croydon.gov.uk/advice/counciltax/reductions/spddiscount
http://www.croydon.gov.uk/advice/counciltax/reductions/counciltax-spd-review
The ones that get it right
We have spent enough time pointing out councils that misrepresent council tax discounts and the way they work.
If, after disregarding a person, the number of adults resident is only one, a 25% discount is given. If all the residents are disregarded, a 50% discount is given. The types of people who are not counted are listed below.
So far, so good.
However Preston spoils it by listing what are in fact discount categories as different discounts.
It also includes false information in a 'fact sheet'.
If you receive a discount/exemption and your circumstances change you must tell
Preston City Council within 21 days.
Nonsense!
If anybody can find a council which does provide accurate information throughout its facts sheets and documents I should be very glad to hear of it.
This Blog page is for examples of good practice, statements by councils and other bodies which fairly and accurately represent the legal position of both council tax departments and council tax payers.
The CAB's guide is good, but not detailed enough to support people being caused distress by legally inaccurate advice from the council.
Brighton has good advice in one leaflet
• If your circumstances change and you are no longer entitled to the
discount or exemption, what should you do?
You must tell the council within 21 days of the change. If you do not, you could be
penalised. Contact Local Taxation Services, P O Box 2929, Priory House, Brighton
BN1 1PS or telephone (01273) 291291 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (01273) 291291 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
However Brighton spoils it all by putting an incorrect and threatening demand for information the taxpayer has no duty to supply on the application forms.
Preston
Preston
If, after disregarding a person, the number of adults resident is only one, a 25% discount is given. If all the residents are disregarded, a 50% discount is given. The types of people who are not counted are listed below.
So far, so good.
However Preston spoils it by listing what are in fact discount categories as different discounts.
It also includes false information in a 'fact sheet'.
If you receive a discount/exemption and your circumstances change you must tell
Preston City Council within 21 days.
Nonsense!
If anybody can find a council which does provide accurate information throughout its facts sheets and documents I should be very glad to hear of it.
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