LIAISON MEETINGS WITH THE HOUSING BENEFIT OFFICE - ARE THEY USEFUL?
In a number of areas voluntary housing organisations hold regular meetings with the housing benefit office to discuss issues of common concern about housing benefit. Sometimes organisations will meet the housing benefit office as a group and sometimes individually. But in some areas housing benefit offices will not agree to these meetings.
Liaison meetings can be a very useful way of sorting out problems. They can also be a way of avoiding doing anything. Sometimes the housing benefit office will use liaison meetings to deflect criticism and as an excuse not to make changes. If you are involved in these meetings it is important to regularly evaluate how effective they are in achieving your aims.
Meetings are likely to be useful if:
- you can easily get items that concern you on to the agenda and have a useful discussion about them.
Signs that the meetings are not being successful include:
- when you raise problems they are not effectively discussed, but you are asked to send officers individual cases;
- the housing benefit office think the system is basically OK, but you think there are an awful lot of problems.
In these cases you should not expect very much from the meetings and should look for other ways of solving problems.
You should never use liaison meetings to deal with problems about individual cases where you could ask for a housing benefit review (see section 12).