Apply to Swansea Council for help with your rent and you could wait the best part of six weeks to find out if you are getting it.
New housing benefit claims took an average of 39.7 days to process between April and June, the council’s own figures show. Its target is 29.
Help with the council tax bill is not much quicker. New Council Tax Reduction claims took 36 days, against the same 29-day target.
The council’s explanation, in a report going to councillors on Tuesday, is blunt: fewer staff, staff off sick, and other work that had to come first at the start of the financial year.
Fix one queue, slow the other
The council says it is now concentrating on getting housing benefit back inside the timescale the Department for Work and Pensions expects. It admits that “will result in further delays in the processing of CTR claims”.
The council tax queue is growing anyway. People moving on to Universal Credit are pushing up the number of reduction claims, the report says, and their circumstances can change several times a year, each change affecting what they are entitled to.
The council plans to automate new council tax reduction claims this year. It says a member of staff will still have to make the decision on each one.
Once a claim is in, changes to it are being handled quickly. Housing benefit changes took under seven days and council tax reduction changes under two, both well inside target. Free school meal decisions are being made within a week.
“Personal financial distress”
Elsewhere in the same set of papers, the finance director reports the council spending £446,000 more than it is funded for on top-up housing payments for people who cannot cover the gap between their benefit and their rent.
“Increasing personal financial distress” is behind it, the report says, and the pressure “is likely to grow and persist”. The council says it is worth flagging because the payments keep people out of hardship where the main benefit system “doesn’t or can’t help”.
More than 4,000 homeless presentations, for the fourth year running
The queue for benefits sits alongside a queue for somewhere to live. The council says it dealt with more than 4,000 homeless presentations last year, the fourth year in a row above that mark.
Bed and breakfast use has come down since Llys Glas opened on Alexandra Road in January, but the council says the numbers “still remain high”. Families with children spent an average of 12.8 days in B&B in the quarter, inside the 14-day target.
A second supported block, the former student building on St Helen’s Road, is due to open early next year. The council rates its homelessness work amber, and warns that the Welsh Government money for temporary accommodation is “insufficient”, leaving the council’s general budget to cover a shortfall it calls “not sustainable”.
The benefits and housing figures go before the council’s finance scrutiny panel, chaired by Cllr Chris Holley, at the Guildhall on Tuesday morning.
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