Southwark Council has through planned inaction decided to have Council Tax Single Persons Discount amnesty. Officers have advised they can;t back date chasing people who’ve wrongfully claimed SPD by 12 months. So delaying by 6+ months considering doing this represents an amnesty costing £1.5m+….
30 April Audit & Governance committee http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/g4262/Public%20reports%20pack%20Tuesday%2030-Apr-2013%2019.00%20Audit%20and%20Governance%20Committee.pdf?T=10
Page 88 section 21 states:
“Single Person Discount Exercise – back dating request. Following initial discussions with the Assistant Director (Revenues, Benefits, FTSS), he wants to make further consideration of the scope for this, particularly in light of other key projects currently being undertake within his division. As such he will report back on in June.”
Effectively a statement of no action taken.
The previous committee 28 February
page 3 of the January meetings minutes section 10 states “bring back further detail to the committee on whether it is possible and cost-effective to data match historical records for signs of possible council tax fraud”.
Page 38 sections 32 – 35 state 13,000 data matches about SPD has been found. That £1.5m has been recovered from wrong SPD claims.
At the time I asked why Southwark didn’t recover money for the past financial year. The data is present to show where SPD has been wrongly claimed for a prior 12 months. The 30 April report states officers have chosen NOT to try and recover another £1.5M+ and they they’ll announce their plans in June. At best this represents a delay of 3 months and loss of £1.5m/4. At worse they’ll try and quietly drop it.
I’m passionate about this as it was my idea that led to the matching exercise resulting in 13,000 matches and £1.5m. To procrastinate and lose potentially £1.5m+ if they quietly drop it as near an election is outrageous.
What do you think?