Housing benefit group

This is essentially a working group of housing benefit practitioners to share best practices and ideas between Kent's local authorities.

The group includes representatives from the two main partners, the Kent Benefit Partnership and Rent Service. They regularly have requests from other groups to attend - e.g. to demonstrate a product or service.

Six of the member councils recently joined forces to procure an e-Benefits software system. This results in lower purchase costs and the ability to share implementation/project management issues. In addition, countywide customers can use this system to claim benefits.

Benefits

• Sharing of ideas, joint take up campaigns, sharing of training - e.g. having common training plans, courses, notes/material.
• Benchmarking of common performance indicators so we can measure performance and highlight good and poor performance.
• Authorities share staff, providing resilience support, such as covering periods of staff shortages.