Call Made For £100m Housing Debt Write-Off

Calls have been made for the government to write off Swindon Borough Council's £100m housing debt. The authority took on the debt when it was imposed on the authority by the government in 2012 under new rules. But now a tenants' group says it should be written off. The housing debt has meant the authority has been unable to build more council homes. Read more on the Swindon Advertiser website.

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/18424071.call-made-100m-housing-debt-write-off/

Government Agrees £65m Debt Write-Off for Council Homes Transfer

The government has today agreed to write off £65.1 million of debt to allow a council to transfer 8,500 homes to its former ALMO. Salford Council hopes to transfer the properties to Salix Homes under new stock transfer rules, published last November, including an offer to cancel historic housing debt. In exchange for the write-off, Salix Homes has committed to invest £75 million to bring all properties up to the government’s decent homes standard by 2020. The deal will be put out to consultation before a tenant vote later this year. To benefit from the debt write-off, the whole process must be completed by March 2015. Read more on Inside Housing.

Universal Credit Has "Not Achieved Value for Money", Warns NAO

In the DWP accounts the National Audit Office states that Universal Credit has "not achieved value for money", noting that the DWP has written off £40.1m of assets developed for the programme "as it will never use them" and that "it also now expects to write down £91.0 million of the remaining assets to nil value by March 2018, due to the considerable reduction in their expected useful life." The head of the NAO comments: "While this is the appropriate accounting treatment, it should not detract from the underlying issue that the Department has spent £91.0 million on assets that will only support a limited service for 5 years, with clear consequences for public value." In addition, it notes that there were "considerable weaknesses" in the department’s financial controls over Universal Credit and that the "size and complexity" of the programme "stretched the Department’s capacity and capability". Read more on the New Statesman website.

Commons Clash over Universal Credit

The government is prioritising the "safe and secure" delivery of Universal Credit, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has told MPs. The £2bn project to simplify the benefits system has been beset by problems and £40m of expenditure on IT systems has been written off. Answering an urgent question in the Commons, Mr Duncan Smith said it was a "major and challenging reform". Labour said the project had effectively been delayed by two years.  Mr Duncan Smith has insisted the flagship project is on track despite acknowledging that 700,000 people will not be moved onto the new system, as planned, by the end of 2017. Read more on the BBC website.

Universal Credit Failed IT System Write-Off Increased By £6m

The government has increased its initial write-off of a failed IT system for universal credit by £6m to £40.1m, but acknowledged that a further £90m of software is likely to be written down in its value over the next five years.  The precise loss to the taxpayer will depend on how much of the existing IT software is retained after it has been merged with a new IT system being developed by the Cabinet Office's Government Digital Service. Seeking to explain the £40m write-off, Mike Driver, finance director general at the DWP, said: "There is no use for the IT code built to run the computer systems. It has no future value. It is not going to generate any future return for the department." Read more on the Guardian website.

Committee Publishes Report on the Early Progress of Universal Credit

The cross-party Public Accounts Committee, chaired by Margaret Hodge MP, has released a critical report examining government progress in delivering Universal Credit and the problems there have been in implementing the programme. The Committee found serious problems with the IT development and the management of the Universal Credit programme, saying in its report that:

·         it is highly likely that a substantial part of the expenditure on IT development for Universal Credit will have to be written off - up to £300 million.

·         oversight of the Universal Credit programme has been characterised by a failure to understand properly the nature and enormity of the task, a failure to monitor and challenge progress regularly, and a failure to intervene promptly when problems arose.

The report outlines a number of recommendations for the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to consider.  Download a copy of the report from the Parliament website.

Universal Credit: £120m Could Be Written Off To Rescue Welfare Reform

Ministers attempting to put the troubled universal credit welfare reform programme back on track have been presented with a radical plan to restart the scheme and write off £119m of work over the past three years. The proposals would create a much more web-based system, reducing the need for jobcentre staff, but putting the whole scheme back to "phase one". The plan is detailed in more than 150 pages of leaked documents that present two options for rescuing the huge project. The other plan would attempt to improve the existing system and build on the investment already made. Both plans were drawn up by civil servants at the direction of DWP ministers.  The documents include a risk assessment of each option, which criticises both plans and warns that a maximum of 25,000 people – just 0.2% of all benefit recipients – will be transferred on to the programme by the next general election, whichever route is taken.  Read more on the Guardian website.