Problems in the delivery of benefits, tax credits and employment services

1. Problems in the delivery of benefits, tax credits and employment services Professor Dan Finn, University of Portsmouth Associate Research Director, Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (www.cesi.org)

2. Service users and benefits, tax credits and employment services • Delivery designed to meet competing Government objectives, including cost efficiency, fraud and behavioural change (help and hassle) • The research • Policy design, equity and delivery • Methods – literature, interviews, consultation groups

3. Findings • Positive response from users to many aspects of new service delivery models, but continuing criticism about experience of most disadvantaged. • Customer satisfaction surveys (80%, rising) – but minorities dissatisfied: • Claims processes and forms to be easier • Better information provision & improved staff knowledge • Take better account of individual needs

4. Critical Literature - Issues • Complexity in benefits/tax credits - tax credit overpayments • Information provision and written communications • Lost documentation & benefit delays • Problems with ICT systems, esp. hearing/language barriers; telephone access to crisis loans • Reduced options for face to face interviews/personal applications • Payments into bank accounts • Office environments and uneven service delivery • Mixed quality of external employment provision (esp. mandatory programmes) • Sanctions, complaints and redress

5. Problems experienced by service users • Administrative Error - payment delays due to administrative mistakes, erroneous benefit suspensions due to incorrect details being entered on records, information that was ‘lost in the system’. • Failure to meet agreed service standards - lengthy periods waiting for payments and appointments, or in getting through on the phone; some unprofessional behaviour by staff; and the loss of documents in the system. • System design - criticisms, for example, about the complexity of forms, the quality of written communications, the need to repeat information, and to have to provide different agencies with the same information due to a change in circumstances.

6. What Service Users Want • Well trained, knowledgeable staff • Option of face to face contact, personal application • Named individual handling case • Privacy – offices and phones (and facilities) • Clarity about entitlements, less jargon –‘simpler, less changeable system’ • Choice, involvement, personalisation in employment services

7. Compliance Issues • Service improvements, but also some transfer of time/access costs to users, and more complex transitions for working age people. • Bank accounts, telephones (cost of mobiles), internet (digital divide), etc. • Work and self sufficiency • High transaction costs and ‘risks’ in changing circumstances • Differential costs for most disadvantaged • Service delivery change – role of and impacts on advice agencies and informal intermediaries • Impacts of further change – scale, intensity & complexity (e.g., flexible New Deal and ‘signing on’) • Service user voice and perspective – user journeys, service mapping, etc.