Revenues and benefits
We provide cost-effective and dynamic solutions to collect, manage and distribute revenue for your council. We reduce the pressure on shrinking budgets by maximising revenue collection to invest back into local services. We work with over 75 local authorities every year, delivering a range of fully managed or automation services designed to generate income; reduce costs and provide a more efficient service for the end-user. We manage over £2 billion annually in local revenues, which represents 25% of the UK market.
Benefits and Overpayments Review
Benefits and Overpayments Review enables your team to automate your Housing Benefit overpayments recovery, speeding up the process and cutting out unnecessary administration.
The easy-to-implement review analyses your existing system to identify, prioritise and report overpayments that are ready for recovery, along with the additional information you need to start collecting it. In turn, this allows you to increase your recovery rates and reduce your costs.
Housing Benefit Award Accuracy Initiative
Housing Benefit Award Accuracy Initiative (HBAAI) allows local authorities to receive an allocation of funding from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to undertake specific activities to identify unreported changes and to ensure the right benefit is being paid to the right person at the right time. Such activities include Housing Benefit Full Case Reviews (FCRs); Housing Benefit Matching Service (HMBS) referrals and Self-employed Earnings Reviews (SERs).
Liberata has the tools to target and categorise high-risk case groups, allowing us to take care of your whole Housing Benefit Award Accuracy Initiative requirements or just perform a basic review – giving authorities the breathing space to focus on their own specific projects and needs.
Universal credit automation
Reduce your team’s daily workload by automating the vast majority of cases between the DWP and the Northgate system. You’ll also receive daily reports to help manage workloads; track case progressions and identify data mismatches before they have financial repercussions. This information can also help improve future automation rates.
– Fully tested and robust Universal Credit parameter configuration delivering up to 90% touchless automation
– Optimal automation with full support
– Comprehensive reporting for workload and exceptions management
– Clear data cleansing process to improve automation rates over time
Business rates review
We can maximise your business rates income by identifying additional items that are either unrated or under-rated. We will run a fully-managed review, including canvassing, outbound calling, site investigations, full customer service support and Valuation Office Agency administration. We can exclude cases upfront that are already on your radar, focussing on previously unrecognised resources.
Our Business Rates Review is a no-risk solution, allowing you to maximise revenue with minimal risk – you will only pay if we are successful.
Empty Homes review
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is addressing the 710,000 UK homes currently lying empty by offering incentives to councils to bring them back into use. Our Empty Homes Review service identifies long term empty (LTE) properties which are occupied and will attract New Homes Bonus funding, as well as increasing Council Tax collection.
Our service includes: Property and review tracking workflow playform, review and reminder mailings, online response platform for residents, inbound and outbound calls, property inspections, additional contact information provided and data analysis, trends and opportunities.
We can work alongside your in-house team to ensure there is no duplicated effort or cost involved, and on average we will remove 23% from your council’s LTE list on completion of the review. This could be the last year that this scheme is made available, so we advise acting quickly.
Single Person Discount review
An estimated £90m in council tax revenue is lost annually as a result of incorrect or fraudulent Single Person Discount (SPD) claims. Our review service incorporates data matching from leading data sources and personal contact to verify and validate SPD entitlements. The result is more accurate Council Tax records, increased revenue and a reduction in the number of incorrect claims.
The service usually takes four months from start to finish including the cooling-off period so it really is a relatively quick and painless process for improving the accuracy of your records and unearthing new income.
Anytime
Providing experienced revenues & benefits officers as an extension to your team when you need a helping hand rather than trying to rely on temporary staff. Our service can reduce your costs by up to 50% and staff members are experienced in NEC and Academy systems for all types of processing support (including revenues processing, benefits processing, NNDR processing and support for HBAAI / VEP)
Unified Assessments
Often customers that are eligible for multiple entitlements have to apply for each in different ways – this is time consuming, unnecessarily complicated, frustrating and likely to lead to mistakes. Our Unified Assessments service provides a solution to this by allowing a single claim to be used against multiple entitlements (for example, Council Tax Support; Housing Benefit, Concessionary Travel, Free School Meals and Disabled Facilities Grants among others)
