NFI council tax case studies praise single person discount maladministration in Solihull, Brent, Haringey

 HERE ARE SOME COUNCILS WHOSE MALADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN PRAISED BY THE AUDIT COMMISSION


http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/fraud/nfi/public-sector/case-studies/Pages/counciltaxcasestudies.aspx



HARINGEY

Tells people they must 'register' for council tax if they move into the Borough.  Not true.


I know I must let you know about any changes in my circumstances which might affect my
account.    (Not true, council has no business to put false information on forms and make people sign them)

You must notify the Council immediately if any of the above details change  (Again, not true)

Local residents are concerned about this. See for example

http://www.harringayonline.com/forum/topics/council-tax-bill-single?page=3&commentId=844301%3AComment%3A231318&x=1#844301Comment231318

where Haringey council officers are apparently putting yet more misinformation into the public domain.

4 April 2011

Dear Councillor Stanton

Council Tax: Single Person Discount Review

Thank you for your e mail dated 22 March 2011 and for bringing to my attention the comments left on the Harringay Online website.

Single Person Discount (SPD) is a statutory relief available to Council Tax payers where only one adult is resident at the property. The value of the single persons discount is significant. Haringey currently awards SPD to 34,824 residents. Based on a Band D property, the SPD is £373.54 per recipient giving a total cost to the Council Tax collection fund of £13,008,156.96.

Billing authorities are under a duty to take ‘reasonable steps’ to ascertain discount entitlement before calculating the council tax liability. This requirement arises from Regulation 14 Council Tax (Administration and Enforcement) Regulations 1992) (S.I.1992/613), and Authorities must, therefore, undertake procedures to check on the possibility of discount.

Every year, we receive a high volume of applications for SPD.   Unfortunately it has been proven that some of these applications are not genuine and, whilst the Local Taxation Service has strong controls in place, it is important that the Council is seen to be taking steps to ensure that every resident is paying the correct amount of council tax.

The Council also has a legal requirement to review discounts annually. All council tax bills are annotated with the following message ‘If your circumstances change you may no longer be entitled to any discount or exemption shown on this bill and must tell us immediately’. Unfortunately, this approach has not always proved to be effective as a number of taxpayers still fail to advise us of the change to their circumstances.

When deciding on a strategy to review SPD for 2011/2012, the Local Taxation Service decided to issue a separate review form to ensure that our records are as up to date as possible. There are sound financial reasons for including the review form with the Annual Bill as it was deemed to be the most cost effective way of contacting those concerned -  thus saving on additional paper, printing and postage costs at a later point in the year. Additionally, reviewing accounts early in the financial year means that those taxpayers whose discount is withdrawn due to a change in their circumstances have more time to repay any discount they are not entitled to.

Having read the comments on the website I must confess that I am disappointed that a number of subscribers appear to suggest that they have either not opened or properly read the correspondence sent to them.  Please be assured that there was no intention to hide the review form in an attempt to raise additional income as some have suggested on the website. In fact those who do not return their form will be issued with a reminder before any discount is withdrawn. If a discount ends up being withdrawn as a result of a failure to return the form, the taxpayer will be sent a bill detailing the change of liability. If they are indeed still entitled to the discount they will be able to submit a new claim for SPD, and, once all the relevant checks have been undertaken, the discount will be reinstated as appropriate.

Finally, the information you have provided us has of course proved us with valuable feedback on the way that we conduct our SPD reviews and we will certainly consider ways on ensuring that future contact promotes the inclusion of and importance of returning SPD review forms within the prescribed timescale.

As a result of your e mail we are looking at how much it might cost to have a message included on the front of the envelope drawing taxpayers notice to its content.

I hope the above clarifies the position regarding the single persons discount review and allays any concerns you may have.

Should you have any further queries or suggestions as to how we can improve communication with our taxpayers please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Head of Benefits and Local Taxation

SOLIHULL

When we work out your Council Tax we assume two adults live in most properties.  (Stop it, then)

Households with more than one adult living in the property where the second adult is a full time student, student nurse, apprentice, is severely mentally impaired or detained in prison may not claim a single person discount but may claim an alternative 25% discount. 

If you are not the only adult (aged 18 or over) living in the property you will now be required to pay the full rate of council tax. 

Households with more than one adult living in the property where the second adult is a full time Student, Student Nurse, Apprentice, is severely mentally impaired or detained in prison may not claim a single person discount but may claim an alternative 25% discount. For more information and to apply for a discount of this nature please contact us on             0121 704 8100 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            0121 704 8100      end_of_the_skype_highlighting       or email us at revenues@solihull.gov.uk.

(Utter nonsense)

BRENT

Can't tell the difference between discounts and disregard categories.

Discounts on council tax discount are available under certain circumstances.

A discount may be available if you are:

• a person aged over 18 living on your own in a property (this is referred to as asingle person discount)
• a person for whom child benefit is being received
• an 18 or 19 year old who has just left school or college
• a student nurse
• an apprentice
• a Youth Training trainee
• a patient resident in hospital
• a person who is being looked after in a residential care home, nursing home, or hostel providing a high level of care
• a person living with, and providing essential care for someone, for example due to disability, who is not their spouse, partner or child under 18
• a care worker such as a Community Service Volunteer
• a person who is severely mentally impaired
• a convicted or remand prisoner, unless in prison for non-payment of fines or the council tax
• a person staying in certain hostels or night shelters
• a person living in a religious community with no income of their own
• a member of International Headquarters or Defence Organisation
• a member of a Visiting Force
• a diplomat.

If you are the only adult living on your own in a property, you may be entitled to a single person discount of 25 per cent off your council tax.

You must be over 18 to be entitled to this discount.

Use this form to request (or to cancel, if your situation changes) a single person discount.

Parliament misled by Audit Commission

Reading again the Hansard debates on the data matching provisions within the Audit Commission Act it is increasingly clear that the AC misled Parliament. For in Parliament people said that they had been told that the NFI involved matching data to identify actual inconsistencies, and that councils had to investigate to see whether these arose from fraud OR error. You will realise that the NFI has taken to denying that it assumes that one or the other must apply, and in denying in respect of the CT output that it has ever thought that one or the other must apply, and that there is any requirement that one or the other must apply.

How can Parliament possibly ensure that its laws achieve what they think they will achieve when those advising it routinely provide misleading or inaccurate reports to it?

The other big question is how many more of the NFI exercises are base upon mistakes like the 'single person discount' mistake?

How many people get odd phone calls or letters from fraud investigators on fishing trips within fishing trips who are clearly badly  briefed about the legal situation they are in?

Only a full review will reveal the extent of NFI incompetence, and I for one doubt that there will be any political will to embark on such a review: the scale of the injustice and maladministration is already somewhat difficult to comprehend, involving as it does hundreds of thousands of innocent entitled voters and their families.

Westminster, Capita, ad hoc subcommittee local audit bill. Maladministration

Since Parliament is in Westminster, it seems like a good idea to see whether Westminster is administering council tax discounts in accordance with the regulations, and whether it provides clear and accurate information to its taxpayers about their position and duties under council tax discount law.  It appears  not.  This means that the sub committee has an example very close to home of how incorrect data is created and shared in ways approved of by the Audit Commission and involving similar process to those it is being asked to approve of via Part 6 of the Local Audit Bill.

The first piece of bad news is that Capita is involved.  Capita routinely asserts that disregard categories are discounts*.  Disregard categories are just that: categories of people who fall to be disregarded, or who do not count as residents.  Capita run data mining exercises to identify people as 'high risk' fraud cases, in, it would appear, a similar manner to the NFI.  It usually misleadingly alleges or implies that the people concerned were claiming to live alone and puts only a fraction of single person discount recipients into the match.  

It uses the full electoral register to decide that people are entitled to a discount of the appropriate amount, which nobody has been given legal advice is legal and proper/pretends that it is checking 'claim's that particular circumstances exist.   Garbage like 'checking your validity to claim single person discount' is usually used about such reviews, in an apparent attempt to square Regulation 14 with what is being done.   Regulation 14 has been turned from a duty to  ascertain whether any discount applies and if so the amount of that discount into a duty to check whether a discount which DOES NOT EXIST is being 'claimed' correctly.

It works with credit reference firms to do this, and has lie detection voice software on its phones, another strategy which has caused injustice and distress.  The software appears to be unable to distinguish between innocent and distressed people and guilty people.  A great many entitled people have been distressed or enraged by the practices of councils which have outsourced revenue functions to Capita.  

Let us see whether the web site of Westminster provides clear and accurate information to taxpayers.

When we work out the full Council Tax amount we assume that two adults are living in the property.

You should not.  Council tax law contains no such provision or requirement.  

If you think you may be entitled to a discount or that your property is exempt for one or more of the reasons stated, you can download an application form from this page
carers discount, apprentice discount, child benefit discount, student discount

These are not discounts, as you are telling people, they are categories of disregarded adults. To be fair, another page does state that these groups of people are 'not counted' when deciding how many residents there are.   But the taxpayer has probably been confused by the bits he has read and may not get that far.  It seems fairly  clear, however, that Capita does regard some people as 'claiming' or 'receiving' a single person discount as opposed to a disregard discount, and that these are the people whose address is sent to the credit reference agency for data mining.  

This is confirmed by the council's annual council tax leaflet, a document which should contain information prescribed by law but which in fact contains other misleading information, again on the lines that disregard categories are types of discount. **

Other information provided by the council calls disregard categories 'status discounts'

Misinformation therefore runs throughout the documents via which this council communicates to its residents.  

If you are an individual living in Westminster you may use your My Westminster account to register a property and up to 6 residents for Council Tax. 

There is no requirement to 'register' residents for council tax.  The requirement for a local taxation register was abolished along with the poll tax.  Why is Westminster saying things like this on its web site.  The LGO has explicitly rebuked one council for telling people they have to 'register' for council tax, with the reason being that this is not true.






*
http://www.swindon.gov.uk/ab/ab-counciltax/ab-counciltax-discounts/Documents/counciltaxdiscountapplicationform1107.pdf

http://www.capita.co.uk/markets/Documents/SPD%20Brochure_2012_FINAL.pdf

http://www.mendip.gov.uk/NewsArticle.asp?id=SX9452-A783C976

**

http://transact.westminster.gov.uk/docstores/publications_store/council%20tax%20a-z%202012-13.pdf

See also November 11 2011 nfi asserts in press release it has found More than £22 million worth of false claims for student and single person council tax discounts;  source cites 'Protecting the Public Purse' annual report for 2011

Timothy Pitt Payne 'The Cannock Chase Opinion'

I wondered whose side Mr Pitt Payne had been on in the disputes about Audit Commission access to the full electoral register for the purpose of, allegedly, falsely suspecting people of fraud on the basis of mistaken beliefs about UK law and how it works.  For Mr Pitt Payne has since written that the rationale was that the exercise provided prima facie evidence of fraud.  The exercise, as a subsequent legal briefing by the Audit Commission Corporate Services Legal Team, provides no evidence of fraud under either heading within the Fraud Act.   It would appear, to judge from Clive Lewis's account of Mr Pitt Payne's opinion,  that Mr Pitt Payne had not been asked for an opinion on council tax discount law or electoral law.   Rather like Clive Lewis, he appears to have taken it as read that the NFI's account of the matter would have been properly researched legally.

It turns out that Mr Pitt Payne was consulted by Cannock Chase council.    His view that the rationale was that the exercise provided prima facie evidence of fraud may have come from chats with people at Cannock or it may have arisen for other reasons, such as the use of the terribly misleading nickname to describe a discount of 'the appropriate amount'.  

However, since the Audit Commission's Legal Services Department provided the NFI with an account of how discounts work in terms of the law, the idea that this exercise provides fraud under either heading within fraud law has been utterly discredited.

This means that both the Audit Commission and Cannock wasted a lot of public money on legal opinions when both of them ought, as a matter of their general duties and professional responsibilities, to have known that the premises on which the electoral register were being sought were utterly false.

One barrister involved did appear to have some inkling of the problems, but his views were not considered, and were not even apparently put to Clive Lewis.  Perhaps this is because they were considered too risky to ask him about?

One also has to assume either that neither of these gentlemen live in a council area which provides clear information about the Section 11 25% discount via their council tax demand notices as required by law or that they simply do not read them.  For otherwise they should know how this discounts ought to be administered.

One cannot help but wonder how far the administrative practices of Cannock Chase at the present date comply with the regulations and generally with the requirements of public administration and so on.  No prizes for guessing the answer ...


http://www.cannockchasedc.gov.uk/site/scripts/download_info.php?fileID=632

If you wish to apply to be disregarded*  please write to:

Local Taxation and Benefits Section
Cannock Chase District Council
PO Box 28
Civic Centre
Beecroft Road
Cannock
Staffs
WS11 1BG

* How silly is this! A disregarded person cannot 'apply' to be disregarded.  Such matters would be for the liable adult.  Some disregarded persons cannot be liable.  Moreover, being disregarded happens as a matter of law, it is not a status which has to be 'applied' for to exist; it exists as a matter of law. 


LIVING WITH SOMEONE, BUT CLAIMING SINGLE PERSON DISCOUNT?

It is perfectly legal to 'claim' a single person discount if you are 'living with someone'.

Have Your Circumstances Changed?
If you receive any form of reduction to your bill, you must tell us about any change of circumstances within 21 days. If you do not do this, the Council may impose a £70 penalty.

Here the council is attempting to scare people into providing information about third parties which they have no duty to provide under council tax law by threatening them with a penalty.  This is plain and clear maladministration.  Councils should provide clear and accurate information at all times.  If you live in Cannock Chase, complain to the council, and when if tells you the Auditors make it behave like this, as it may well do,  or misstates your obligations under Regulation 16 or any other regulation, then complain to the LGO and to your MP. 

NOT TRUE! NOT TRUE! GOTCHA! BULLYING, MISINFORMATION, MALADMINISTRATION, THREATS.

How the Council will use your information
The Council is required under section 6 of the Audit Commission Act 1998 to participate in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) data matching exercise. Council Tax data will be provided to the Audit Commission for NFI and will be used for cross-systems and cross-authority comparison for the prevention of fraud. 

We advise Council Taxpayers that the data held  by the Council in respect of your Council Tax liability will be used for cross-system and cross-authority comparison for the  prevention of fraud.

Translation?  We are likely to falsely suspect you of fraud because we are not complying with council tax regulations and administering discounts in accordance with the law. 

The Council is also working in partnership with other Staffordshire authorities to conduct a review of 

Council Tax discounts. The Council may share the information you have provided to the Council Tax section, with private 

organisations employed to conduct data matching for the prevention and detection of fraud. 

Want to bet on whether or not the council is sharing 'codes' such as disregard and single, which have no basis in council tax  discount law, probably with Experian  (now of Dublin to avoid paying tax, apparently, formerly of Nottingham), but possibly via Northgate or Capita?  It looks like a dead cert.

Data matching helps to 

identify fraud but it may also identify claims and payments which are erroneous. Where a match is found it may indicate 

that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption is made as to whether there is fraud, 

error or another explanation until an investigation is carried out. 

What nonsense this is! Why should anybody have to carry out an investigation seeking an 'explanation' when no inconsistency has been discovered? Who has anything to 'explain'?  Except Cannock Chase which ought to explain why it is providing misinformation about council tax discount law to its citizens via its web site when providing incorrect information is maladministration.

For further information you can visit our website www.cannockchasedc.gov.uk/nfi

Please let us know if you are claiming a Council Tax discount for living alone but your circumstances have changed.


BINGO!

Audit Scotland

I do regret that the ad hoc committee did not call Robert Black to account for some of the misleading and apparently ill-informed advice put out by Audit Scotland in the past.  Remember that council tax discount law in Scotland and England are more or less identical.  There is no such thing as a 'single person discount' in Scotland any more than there is in England. The main responsibility for the belief of some within Audit Scotland that there is such a discount, appears to rest with the Audit Commission, because when challenged Audit Scotland tends to repeat what the Audit Commission has told it.

Here are some examples of misleading and/or plain inaccurate assertions about council tax discount and electoral register 'matching' from Audit Scotland

Finally, a small minority of Scottish councils have argued that the ER is not a document ‘relating to the accounts’ as specified in the auditors’ powers of access in s100. While we respect this view, we do not agree with it. The Council Tax Income Account is one of the main financial statements subject to audit, it reflects the amount of discounts awarded, and the electoral register is an effective source of the number of persons that appear to reside in a household when testing the validity of an SPD.

They are testing the 'validity' of a discount which does not exist in Scotland or in England.

They then referred me to the very National Fraud Initiative Annual Report which the Audit Commission's own legal team agreed could more accurately reflect council tax discount law. It looks as if the Audit Commission may have forgotten to inform Audit Scotland about this? 

Then they wheel out Clive Lewis again, who obligingly provided them with an opinion containing this

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. That may indicate, amongst other things, that fraudulent

claims for single person discounts are being made.

This is more or less the same quotation which the Audit Commission says means not but, but and.

See the Blog here about whether Clive Lewis can understand the difference between 'but' and 'and'.

On the basis of this, however, Audit Scotland - apparently dangerously confident that Clive Lewis had been instructed accurately about council tax discount and electoral law, and that he DOES know the difference between 'but' and 'and'  - believes that there is such a thing as a single person discount and that you can use the electoral register to throw up evidence of inconsistencies.

I assume that the NFI has convinced them that either the discount or the register must be false.  Whatever, Scottish councils have recently started one after the other to list disregard categories as different discounts and to provide legally false information to residents.  Edinburgh is a very good example.  One supposes that Audit Scotland started in its own back yard. One can only hope that some well connected discount recipients in Morning Side take the matter to their lawyers.  

Not only that but it called together lots of important people at important meetings and passed on this utterly misleading information to them, ignoring everything councils had said about the electoral register not being a document relating to the accounts of councils.  Of course on the basis of what Clive Lewis says about the powers and duties of local authority auditors, read in the light of a proper understanding of council tax and electoral law, it is clearly not a document relating to the accounts of the council.  

In another 'Scottish Opinion' Clive Lewis says

Furthermore, potential cases of fraud which are identified when the electoral register is compared with council tax records are referred back to the local authority for investigation.

Having obtained a legal briefing on parts of council tax discount law, and complaints, the NFI started to actively deny that people on 'hit' lists were labelled as potential frauds.  I think it is plain that in denying this the NFI was not being up front about matters.   

If only the ad hoc sub committee had thought to ask Robert Black about all this.  I wish I had been on the committee.

Finally - Liberty gets to grips with the issues in the bill

It is good to see that more than one piece of evidence to the ad hoc sub committee dealing with the draft local audit bill has raised the civil liberties and human rights implications of the broadly (and arguably badly) drafted provisions in Part 6.

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy12/liberty-s-submission-to-the-draft-local-audit-bill-committee-oct-2012-.pdf

If this issue affects you, write to your MP asking them to read and to support Liberty's evidence.  You might need to download it because it has not appeared on Parliament's web site yet.

This passage appears to me to sum up what is happening with the electoral register matches, especially with the rising 18s report:

Data thrown up by these technologies, often without any initial human intervention, will inevitably highlight entirely innocent activity as patterns which appear suspicious. These kinds of data processing carry the clear potential to mislead, given that they operate, by necessity, on the basis of simplistic generalisations about human behaviour or stereotypes about the implications of personal characteristics.

See also the comments here

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/pdfs/policy07/serious-crime-bill-2nd-reading-commons.pdf

If people who have done nothing wrong feel that they are nevertheless being targeted by the criminal justice system the effect could be disastrous. We fear that these schemes will corrode the public faith and trust that is vital to the effective administration of justice in this country.

Well done Liberty!  Now we need Big Brother Watch to get involved with this one: it is right up their street. If they thought National Identity Cards were a bad idea, the sort of massive and intrusive state database which Part 6 paves the way for will have them very worried.

The “right to data protection” is found in Article 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (and Article 16(1) of “The Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union”). The three parts to Article 8 state:

1. “Everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her”.

2. “Such data must be processed fairly for specified purposes and on the basis of the consent of the person concerned or some other legitimate basis laid down by law. Everyone has the right of access to data which has been collected concerning him or her, and the right to have it rectified.

3. Compliance with these rules shall be subject to control by an independent authority.

Therefore the Audit Commission should stop creating via its secret on line Audit Guide National Roll Out Guidelines data which is not accurate, not fair and is highly prejudicial.