I urge you to read this article and to give thanks to God for not being at the mercy of People who run Housing Benefit Departments.
In my day-job as a letting agent have a very limited contact with Housing Benefit Offices. My experience is not as negative as that of Intrepid Carpet, but I can well imagine what it is like for him. Generally Herts Lettings will not let to any tenants on Housing Benefit, not because we think that they will be bad tenants, but because we don't want to have to deal with Housing Benefit. Random amounts of rent are paid in an irregular stream, generally at intervals of one week or four weeks. Strange gaps appear around the end of the fiscal year. Generally the benefit is not sufficient to cover the rent and the tenant has to pay a supplement, usually via a monthly standing order, to compensate. Without a very good accounting system it is virtually impossible to keep track of arrears.
The bigger problem is that there really is no mechanism through which claimants are ever going to receive anything other than the most unsatisfactory treatment from the authorities. There is no economic incentive for councils to employ staff who are remotely efficient and so benefit offices, I am sure, will attract the most useless sorts. Failing to reply to written communication is no unheard of in business, but it is inconceivable that anyone ever loses his job in the state sector for this kind of failure.
Part of the problem is that benefits are impossibly complicated. There are hundreds of benefits that may be claimed and neither claimants nor staff are likely to be able to understand them. Nobody loses except the taxpayer, but since they are such a diffuse group they can never overcome the power of the vested interest.
Intrepid Carpet thinks that things might be a bit better under the Conservatives. I think this is unlikely although it is conceivable that some simplification might be attempted.
