"In order to support the transition of the revised Local Housing Allowance scheme effective April 2011, in addition to a period of transitional protection for existing customers, the government is providing an increase to the Discretionary Housing Payments funding for local authorities over the next three years. This funding is intended to provide targeted support to help meet the housing needs of customers."
The Housing Benefit (Amendment) Regulations 2010 & The Rent Officers (Housing Benefit Functions) Amendment Order 2010
“Local Authorities will be given scope to take account of the priorities of their own local communities when determining the amount of support for vulnerable and low income households to meet their Council Tax bills
Universal Credit: Welfare that works – Whitepaper
The Coalition Government’s reform of the benefit system is designed to make it fairer, more affordable and better able to tackle poverty, worklessness and welfare dependency.
Furthermore over the next three years the new regime will centralise the majority of benefits administration work, it will also give Local Authorities greater discretion (and funding) to provide support to their most vulnerable citizens. This is likely to include devolution of more discretionary elements, such as community care grants and crisis loans.
An early example of this is the amendments to the Local Housing Allowance scheme arrangements, effective April 2011, which will introduce measures aimed at reducing the overall level of Housing Benefit payments, and transitional measures including short-term protection and increased levels of Discretionary Housing Payment funding in order to minimise the impact for the most vulnerable.
Clearly, the need to target these resources at the most vulnerable and deserving people will be increasingly critical as public sector funding cuts begin to bite.
In order to achieve this targeting, local benefits teams will need to be empowered with tools that allow them to quickly establish the vulnerability of clients and the likely impact of discretionary funds.
What we offer
Our Orion Search solution provides a simple and effective way for Local Authorities to identify and manage Discretionary Benefit awards to its most vulnerable and needy citizens.
The solution delivers a single view of vulnerability (based on a restricted set of data drawn from multiple agencies) to support the payment of Discretionary Housing Payments to the most vulnerable and needy clients, in line with proposed LHA scheme amendments.
In addition the same solution will be able to support any revised (Local) Council Tax Rebate discretions introduced from 2013.
The solution is deployed on a 'Cloud' computing basis at a data centre that is being accredited to sit on the secure GovConnect network. Because of this approach the solution does not require a big technology integration / implementation project at client sites and can be implemented in a few months.
In summary, our ‘Targeting Discretionary Benefits’ solution delivers a real time view of vulnerability to front line benefits, to support the effective distribution of discretionary benefits. It does this in a highly secure fashion that has been reviewed by the Information Commissioner’s Office.