Minutes of the Tax Credits Consultation Group Meeting 17 January 2007

Attendees

HMRC

Nigel Jordan (Chairman)
Kevin O’Hanlon (Secretary)l
Irenka Timlin Anisha Gani
Keith Golding Anne Shevas
Andrew Burland Annette Matton
Chris Fox Allison Lyons
David Skinner Jo Toal
James Snook
Gita Patel
Annie Bush Simon Williams
Derek Tilstone Vince Groome

HMT

Nick Burkitt Kate O’Reilly

DWP

Roger Pugh

Adjudicator’s Office

Simon Oakes

Representatives

Katie Lane – Citizens Advice
Pauline Hunter – Disability Alliance
Jane Hayball – Local Government Association
Victoria Todd – Low Incomes Tax Reform Group
Peter Gravestock – Association of Tax Technicians/TaxAid
Beth Lakhani – Child Poverty Action Group
Robin Williamson – Low Incomes Tax Reform Group
Siobhán Harding – Citizens Advice (Northern Ireland)

Apologies

Kate Bell – One Parent Families
Abigail Bremner – Citizens Advice (Scotland)
Angela Gillon – Gingerbread
David Kinloch – Local Government Association
Jane Moore – Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales

1. Welcome and introductions

Nigel opened the meeting by welcoming everyone. He particularly welcomed Simon Oakes from the Adjudicator’s Office and Siobhán Harding who was attending for the first time.

2. Minutes of meeting of 15th November 2006

Robin Williamson asked that the minutes of the previous meeting be amended to show his organisation as Low Incomes Tax Reform Group.

Representatives queried the following:

point 8.1 - the guidance for Helpline advisers when claimants were off work sick. HMRC explained that the guidance is being updated. HMRC agreed that, if any training material was produced, then this would be shared with representatives
point 8.2 - whether all calls to the tax credits Helpline are recorded. HMRC explained that some calls which had been handled outside of the Helpline in the very early months had not been recorded, but that all calls should be recorded now
whether there were delays in opening post. HMRC said they were not aware of any delays and asked representatives to provide specific examples if they came across any problems.

3. Tax Credit complaints

HMRC introduced Simon Oakes from the Adjudicator’s Office. Simon explained that his role is to support the Adjudicator, Dame Barbara Mills.

Simon handed out a process map showing new arrangements for handling ‘third-tier’ complaints. He explained the aim is to introduce in the near future a streamlined process to enable the more straightforward cases to be dealt with quickly. TCO will produce a shortened report for the Adjudicator’s Office on complaints which meet certain criteria. This means the Adjudicator’s Office can spend more time on more complex complaints.

Simon confirmed that the Adjudicator’s Office will set out the criteria and guidelines for the TCO to follow once the streamlined process is introduced and confirmed that the group will see a copy in draft. The Adjudicator’s Office will be working with TCO to ensure the criteria are applied consistently and pointed out that experienced staff from the Adjudicator’s Office will carry out checks on an ongoing basis. Simon stressed that the Adjudicator is independent, and confirmed that all third-tier complaints would still be seen by them under the new process.

Representatives raised the following points:

concerns that reference to the Adjudicator - while welcome, and however well the triaging system was operated in its own terms - was no substitute for an appeal to an independent tribunal
that a formal appeal route would be preferable for disputed overpayments
concerns that some complaints may actually be appeals, and may be incorrectly handled via the disputed overpayments route
what monitoring will be in place and whether representatives can see any guidelines
whether the operation of the reasonableness test could be reviewed. HMRC said the policy will not change but the CoP26 guidelines are under review. They said this would be discussed at the next meeting of the CoP26 Working Group.

HMRC said they are looking at the handling of appeals and will come back to the Consultation Group about this in the future.

Simon extended an open invitation to any representatives who wanted to visit the Adjudicator’s Office to inform the secretary of the Group.

4. Operational position

TCO

TCO reported that the work state remains in a healthy position. A brief update was given.

Staff are being balloted on industrial action to take place on 31 January 2007, and the result of the ballot will be known on 21 January.

Representatives raised the following points:

the position on the issue of manual payments if claimants’ payments stopped after reporting a change of circumstances . HMRC confirmed that the number of people paid manually has risen but they have been handled successfully and payments were being made promptly. In particular, anyone due a payment before Christmas had received it
some claimants receiving manual payments were not being picked up on scans and therefore not receiving their Healthy Start entitlements. HMRC confirmed the manual process provides for information to be sent to the Department of Health for them to issue Healthy Start Vouchers. HMRC said they will provide more information about Healthy Start Vouchers at the next meeting
possible duplication of payments once system payments recommence. HMRC said they have improved processes to reduce the risk of this happening. HMRC pointed out that they write to people who get manual payments to alert them to the possibility that payments may be duplicated
whether the announced reorganisation programme will affect the issue of manual payments. HMRC said we they will continue to make payments using the current process, and pointed out that manual payments are generally posted to claimants, rather than being made at face to face meetings
not all customers can easily obtain payments at an Enquiry Centre. HMRC asked representatives to provide specific details and they will investigate any individual problems where the correct process did not appear to have been followed
still seeing problems where customers cannot make repayments in-year and were advised not to because there were some delays in recording repayments onto the system. HMRC asked representatives to provide specific examples to enable them to investigate and better educate staff.

Contact Centres

HMRC said the Helpline position remains very healthy. They provided a brief update on the operational position. HMRC said the Helpline had been looking at more joined-up processes for tax credits and Child Benefit, for example change of address details reported on tax credits claims also being passed to Child Benefit. They confirmed that, where information is shared with Child Benefit, it is recorded on the Household Notes.

A representative said they had still not received copies of the Call Centre Scripts they had requested. HMRC confirmed that some of the scripts requested were currently under revision, but that they will arrange for these to be sent out to representatives when they are finalised.

5. DWP update

A representative asked about the position of WTC for DWP benefits when WTC continued to be paid incorrectly. DWP confirmed that WTC is, correctly, being taken into account as long as it is being paid.

DWP confirmed that a representative from the Disability & Carers Service would attend the next meeting of the DLA Working Group

DWP said a representative had raised issues around liaison between HMRC and DWP as a possible agenda item for DWP’s Policy & Strategy Forum. Other representatives agreed that DWP/HMRC liaison on a number of matters should be tackled not only in the Policy and Strategy Forum but also in any other forum in which matters which crossed the responsibilities of both departments were in issue. Representatives asked if someone from HMRC should attend the Policy and Strategy forum meetings. DWP said they would contact the representative who raised this matter to establish what exactly is needed and would include HMRC in that correspondence. HMRC said they would like further information to enable a decision to be made as to which forum is best to consider which issues. Representatives, DWP and HMRC were all agreed that it is important to both avoid duplication of effort, and to ensure that issues are discussed in the most relevant forum to help identify practical improvements.

Representatives fully supported the need for an International Working Group, and felt that the VCS group had not been effective in addressing issues, particularly those relating to tax credits. Representatives would be sending further comments about this in response to HMRC’s recent reply to the request for an International working group.

A representative asked for clarification about the 20-week Child Benefit extension period. HMRC said they had been in touch with DWP colleagues about their guidance and would provide updated information when it is available.

6. Working hours

HMRC said information about working hours is now on the website. They said a letter will be sent to Working Tax Credit recipients in April 2007 reminding them of the need to report if the number of hours they work drop.

Representatives would like to see improvements to the FAQs on working hours for those with no regular working pattern - particularly the answer to the first question - and said that they would forward more detailed comments about the FAQs. HMRC said they will look to see if they can provide further information on the website. It was explained that the regulations were designed to deal with circumstances where the customer is not certain that a change had taken place – such as when they had no fixed working pattern. The time starts to run therefore when the person becomes aware of the change – HMRC would take a fair approach when determining this.

7. Future arrangements for grant-in-aid funding for VCS

HMRC said they are considering grant-in-aid funding for next year and are working on updated templates and guidance for the process. HMRC said they have organised an event for external stakeholders on 13 February 2007 when they will explain the process in detail. HMRC said following this event bids would be invited via the HMRC website.

HMRC confirmed these arrangements for applying for funding will also extend to Northern Ireland.

8. 3rd party authorisation

HMRC outlined the latest thinking about 3rd party authorisations and said that a working group has been set up to review the current arrangements. HMRC said there is a Working Group meeting in February and invited representatives to contact them with any further points. The working group is due to report in April/May 2007 and they will be happy to report back to the Consultation Group around that time.

HMRC agreed that the new TC689 will be changed to take on board representatives’ comments about the length of time the form would be valid and would retain the claimants’ choice of how long the authorisation would be valid. In addition representatives agreed that the form should be extended to cover child benefit as well as tax credit.

9. Communications Review – Claim Form

HMRC were continuing work to improve forms and notices and handed out draft copies of a redesigned claim form to representatives to look at. They stressed it was still in draft and needed more work to be done, including decisions to be made on the principles applied and when it might be delivered. One of the key assumptions is that the new form will ‘slot into’ existing IT, so the new form does not currently look to capture any new data. Representatives agreed they would like a separate meeting to consider and discuss the content of the new claim form in some detail.

HMRC said that they were aware, via Rightsnet, that some intermediaries had been producing PDFs of claim forms. They asked representatives not to produce their own version of the claim form as it can create difficulties with Rapid Data Capture.

10. Issues log and working group update

Issues log

HMRC handed out an updated Issues log.

Representatives made the following points:

Appeals - they were surprised to see that the entry about appeals had been closed as there was an outstanding issue about the appeals process. HMRC agreed to look into this
General - they would like to continue to monitor items cleared from the Issues log. They said they would review the Issues log and will feedback on those issues which they believe remain to be addressed
Fast tracking - they would like an update. HMRC confirmed that DWP is taking this forward
Website - a representative passed on thanks from John Andrews for the meeting with John Francis about the HMRC website and asked if there was any feedback to his comments. HMRC said they would check the position. A representative said the information on the What’s New page of the HMRC website and the tax credits site should be the same. HMRC confirmed that this should be the case and they would keep an eye on it. HMRC advised the minutes of the July and September Consultation Group meetings are now on the Internet and apologised for the delay.

11. Any other business

Representatives felt there should have been a discussion at the last meeting about the delay on bringing in automatic limits on the rates of recovery where awards are adjusted in year following a reported change of circumstances. HMRC said that, at the time of the last meeting, they were still hopeful they could introduce the planned changes, and that the Paymaster General made a statement as soon as the position was clear.

Representatives asked about changes which are due to be introduced in April 2007. HMRC said they are currently proceeding to plan but, as with any IT change, tests could only be carried out on it once the change has been made.

A representative asked whether referral to the team to make the manual adjustment would delay the adjustment of the award. HMRC said resources had been allocated to enable adjustments to be made as quickly as possible.

Representatives asked about the availability of claim forms. HMRC said that forms are currently being issued within 2 – 3 days of a request being received and asked representatives to provide specific examples if they experience any problems.

Representatives were concerned that some items for comment were not passed to them early enough. HMRC said that sometimes there is no opportunity for items to be sent out in advance, but confirmed that they would try to give as much time for consideration as possible.

Representatives thanked HMRC for the answers they had provided in relation to specific questions they had raised prior to the meeting and asked if they could have answers to the outstanding queries, and the points arising during the discussions, as soon as possible before the next meeting.

A representative said that they had seen a copy of a letter from HMRC about telephone recordings. Representatives asked for confirmation of the number of calls diverted to private sector suppliers and for HMRC comments on how this affected overpayment decisions where a phone call was a vital part of the claimant’s argument. HMRC said they would take this away and come back with a response.

HMRC advised that the next meeting will be on 7 March at 100 Parliament Street.