SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS, WHAT ARE THEY AND DO THEY WORK?
Service level agreements are becoming common between organisations as a way of setting out their obligations to one another. They set out what each organisation will do and how problems will be resolved. A service level agreement is not intended to be legally binding. The English National Housing Federation publishes a service level agreement, which you can obtain if you are interested in this area.
Service level agreements do not seem to work very well in the benefit system.
One reason is that organisations cannot deliver on the promises they make to each other. The Benefits Agency has been encouraging its local offices to have service level agreements with housing benefit sections, but this does not seem to have led to any improvement in the service. A 1997 National Audit Office Report- "Measures to Combat Housing Benefit Fraud" commented, "Service level agreements were widely regarded by (the Benefits Agency and councils) as irrelevant to everyday needs, and were felt to be a token gesture - something to be kept on the shelf but not followed in practice. Both parties reported that there were no strong incentives to meet the requirements of the agreements".
So a vital question to ask about any proposed service level agreement is, what happens when the housing benefit office doesn't do the things it says it will?
Another problem is that the service level agreement is imposed on top of, and sometimes as a substitute for, the statutory arrangements. Some years ago companies offering guarantees on their products often did so to try to evade their legal duties. Now every guarantee has to say that your statutory rights are not affected. Perhaps every service level agreement should say the same. To be of any use, an agreement must give you and the tenant rights on top of those laid down in the law and described in section 4 of my guide "Housing Benefit for Housing Managers".
The things that a housing benefit office cannot legally commit itself to in an agreement include:
- what level of rents it will meet;
- how much benefit tenants will get;
- who benefit will be paid to (except in the situations referred to above);
- when it will write off overpayments that are legally recoverable;
Regardless of any agreement, you have legal duties too. These are detailed in section 4 of "Housing Benefit for Housing Managers".
But there are some things that you will probably want to happen which are not covered by the housing benefit regulations. A service level agreement can be a way to make sure that these things happen. These things include:
- in direct payment cases the housing benefit office will tell the landlord when a repeat claim is needed in order to ensure that a claim is made;
- in direct payment cases, when a housing benefit office is about to lapse a claim because the tenant has not provided information or filled in a repeat claim form, it will notify the landlord so that the landlord can chase the tenant; fit office will tell the landlord if entitlement to benefit ends for any reason;
- in direct payment cases the housing benefit office will tell the landlord if entitlement to benefit ends for any reason;
- where a new tenant who will have benefit paid to the landlord is having deductions made from benefit for an overpayment at a previous address, the housing benefit office will tell the landlord as soon as this becomes apparent;
- where an existing tenant is notified of an overpayment which will be deducted from future benefit which would otherwise be paid direct to the landlord the landlord will be informed as soon as this becomes apparent;
- overpayments will not be deducted from arrears which have built up because of delays in processing a claim;
- receipt of claim forms to be acknowledged by post or fax.
Do not sign a service level agreement which does not give you at least some of these advantages.
You should not expect a service level agreement to solve major difficulties with a housing benefit office. There seems to be some evidence that service level agreements have worked best when the housing benefit office is already doing quite well but there are some areas which are still causing problems. In these cases you might want to think about just coming to a written agreement about these areas rather than trying to agree a complete document covering everything.