Have come accross a problem that I feel I should already know the answer to - but I cannot find relevant legislation / guidance (why does this always happen on a Friday afternoon?).

Anyway client moved into RSL flat in 2005 and soon afterwards successfully claimed HB. She opted for payment directly to herself. Now 3 years later, she has just realised that all other residents getting HB also get their SP charge paid direct to landlord, but she does not.

There is no doubt that the tenant is entitled to SP relief because she has been in receipt of HB. Amount underpaid is over £2000. The normal procedure is for SP payments to be made direct to landlord with details taken from lists tenants provided by landlord. Tenants are not involved in this ongoing arrangement.

The landlord is happy to pass on a notification asking for backdated payment but from previous experience expects refusal from the SP admin authorities. (in the past they have refused to backdate SP when backdated HB was awarded to over 60's)

Payment is no problem with tenants whose HB gets paid to the landlord, but not unreasonably, the landlord will not accept liability for arranging SP payments from tenants whose HB is not on record.

I have always been uncomfortable with the practice of landlords and SPAA sorting out SP payments without involving the tenant. This would not happen if SP relief was a benefit that needed a formal claims procedure.

Can anyone point me to legislation covering how SP should be administered so that I can establish if anyone, and if so who, has any liability to pay this backdated SP.

Hi Derek

I worked on the Transitional Housing Benefit scheme for nearly two years but have not had any direct involvement since SP took over in April 2003 so things might have been updated since then. The way it worked was that SP could not be payable before the date that there was a commercial arrangement for the landlord to provide general counselling and support services. This was usually done by varying the tenancy agreement. A HB review would then be requested and that was usually that. All usually fairly straightforward and covered by HB regs. The provider would also have to complete some paperwork for the SP team but this was usually a formality.

One of the problems, and there were many believe me, is that on the SP side of things there was no real guidance to be had from legislation. There was the Care Standards Act 2000 but that had no bearing on the administrative side or on what amounted to care as opposed to support for the purposes of the registration requirements.

The only guidance was just that, written guidance, and that could be found on the Officer of the Deputy Prime Minister’s website or the Department of health’s website.

Regards
Paul

I don't think its possible to claim SP changres from HB after April 2003 as any THB that was paid pre April 2003 via HB would have transferred to the landlord as their own individual SP grant allocation.

Its then up to the landlord to show SP how they use this grant.

If you mean they are being charged for SP services and would have been eligable for full help towards the costs once a charging policy type means test was done thats different, but in that case I would have thought SP would have been sending them bills every month or so?

No - as is the normal practice - tenants are charged SP charges as part of the rent (there is no choice in this it is in effect a condition of tenancy).

New tenants who are known to be claiming HB are simply added to SP list as a formality.

All SP payments are then made directly to RSL landlord. The tenant is not notified or in terms of ongoing adminstration involved at all.

This system works where tenants HB is paid to the RSL but people who want HB paid directly to them can fall in between.

No one has told (or as far as I am aware, is required to tell) the landlord when an existing tenant starts making an HB claim with payment to tenant- yet only the landlord can add the SP relief to the payment made direct from SP to the RSL.

The common sense solution to this is that SPAA should pay backdates in this situation - but I do not know where or even if that is backed up by regulation or guidance - hence my request for help.

Although the tenant has the right to claim relef directly they are unlikely to if they know nothing about it.

Part of our signing up process includes the completion of and 'exchange of information'form with tenant to allow a flow of information between landlord/SP/HB (hopefully). We are also obliged to do a monthly return which details end/start of tenancies, effectively advising of end of claims and a new tenant moving in. I agree, when HB is not paid directly into account and tenant pays full rent, it can be difficult to determine if a fairer charging assessment has taken place, but it has been possible to secure up to 52 wks backdating (in line with HB provisions)so I would say that during this period, some assistance should be provided by landlord (or support service) to ensure full take up of help with charges is secured. I agree direct payments of HB to rent accounts does make it easier to identify those tenants who should get SP funding, but the plans to make payments of HB direct to tenants in the (not to distant) future will cause problems, and one would assume SP payments may take to same route.

Interesting that this topic should come up- one SP authority in our area has recently decided that they will now impose a 3-month limit on "automatic" backdates, with "good cause" backdates for up to a year. Previously you would get a year, so long as you qualified for that period, automatically- like the HB allowance for pensioners (although that is now being reviewed...)

This has led us to look into the issue of whether this is correct and legal etc. However, we have found it impossible to track down the regulations surrounding Supporting People payments. It seems the original poster in this thread is having the same experience. Unlike regs for other benefits, which are fairly easily tracked down via the good old Internet, I cannot find anything about SP - not the regs, not even a "layman's" guide to the rules.

So basically, if anyone has or knows where to find detailed imformation about the rules concerning claims/payments/backdates of SP, I would be VERY interested!

Thanks

There is also the SP website but relevant information is often difficult to find and there are problems accessing some pages.

http://www.spkweb.org.uk/

Thanks for all your replies.

Fully agree with all the contributions.

Having Googled for a considerable time I now feel I know quite a bit about supporting people...... more than I want to know really.

I conclude
1) that it is a mistake to consider SP as any form of benefit. SP was openly set up as an administrative system to distribute government funding for 'personal services' which (vaguely) bridges the divede between benefits and health. Since it is NOT a benefit it is pointless to expect coherent procedures for application and for resolving disputes.

2) The SP Administering Authorities (strange how the government did not make it a formal Local Authority responsibility) were explicitly told that they could use local discretion in SP administration.

3) Nearly all the creative thinking was put into starting the system off and in making transitional arrangements workable. There has been little or no development since then and the transitional arrangements have simply been extended into being permanent.

4)The case that started this thread coud not have happened as a transitional case so the lack of development makes these kinds of problems inevitable now.

5)When (and IF for that matter) (RSL) HB payment patterns are reversed - namely that normal payments are made direct to claimant and, only exceptionally made direct to RSL's SP could become quite a problem.

Yikes:

You say,

"I conclude
1) that it is a mistake to consider SP as any form of benefit. SP was openly set up as an administrative system to distribute government funding for 'personal services' which (vaguely) bridges the divede between benefits and health. Since it is NOT a benefit it is pointless to expect coherent procedures for application and for resolving disputes.

2) The SP Administering Authorities (strange how the government did not make it a formal Local Authority responsibility) were explicitly told that they could use local discretion in SP administration."

I thank you for your hard work googling, this was also the conlusion I was veering towards from my limited research but was vainly hoping I'd got it all terribly wrong! It seems extraordinary that such wide discretion could be given to a national scheme but it's the same with DHP I suppose.

So the consensus seems to be that they make the rules up as they go along and they are quite entitled to do so- scary!

It was all a bit of a dog’s breakfast really. Our team involved 5 welfs and 1 social worker for the whole of our borough. The social worker would carry out the needs assessment of the service user. We would then meet with the care provider, either the landlord or an agency contracted by the landlord and scrutinize the amount of time being claimed for each activity and advise accordingly according to guidance in existence at the time.

For those who took our advice and wanted our help, we would then put the claim together and make sure the appropriate paperwork was completed accordingly, including the tenancies. The overwhelming majority of our claims went through unamended.

One of the big problems that there was little inconsistency across the country. Some HB departments were letting through wildly inflated claims. Some people set themselves up as independent consultants. Some were very good and knew their stuff. Others were extremely dodgy and the advice they were giving out was laughable.

The problem was that a lot of government guidance was so thin or took time to be fleshed out. Thus there was a lot of confusion, particularly among care agencies and landlords, and, even among HB assessors. It was a big advantage for our team to be able to approach the whole thing with a ‘legal mind’ and keep the claims realistic and tight.

Our LA had a very experienced HB person, working with the SP team. All claims went through her and later a colleague. Those LA’s who took a more slack approach subsequently found themselves with large annual cuts in their SP funding allocation and it was known from the start that those cuts would be implemented year on year. I suspect that those LA’s who suffered the biggest percentage cuts would be those less inclined to pay out backdates.

I would like to share our current problem with what SP initially funded and now won't. We have hardwired emergency alarm provision in our sheltered schemes. This was monitored (out of hours) by the LA community alarm service. We had the SP contract, got the money, paid the CA provider - costs increased 2003-07, no additional SP money to cover and costs not passed on to residents. Then in April 2007, the contract (along with our onsite staffing funding) went into the SP pot with the CA provider awarded a contract to provide 3 levels of cover. We continued to provide on site cover with no funding - the impact on tenants, some there for over 20 years would have been unthinkable if we opted not to (the SP view is onsite staff is not necessary). Latest news - the monitoring cover for the fire alarms and the call points in the communal area will no longer be covered by SP funding.....and if we want the CA provider to continue to monitor they will charge us. Any scope to revisit HB via rent/service charge will have to wait until next year as we have only just been advised of this. So, any help required by tenant via SP funding must arise whilst they are in their own home and this does not extend to any communal areas and of course must not be the result of a fire! We already have an example of onsite staff rescuing a tenant from a fire. This is a result of the Value Improvement Project!!!???