The Use of Discretion in a Rule‐Bound Service: Housing Benefit Administration and the Introduction of Discretionary Housing Payments in Great Britain
| Author | Bruce Walker,Pat Niner |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.0033-3298.2005.00437.x |
| Date | 01 March 2005 |
| Published date | 01 March 2005 |
Public Administration Vol. 83 No. 1, 200 5 (47–66)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005, 9600 Garsi ngton Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
THE USE OF DISCRETION IN A RULE-BOUND
SERVICE: HOUSING BENEFIT
ADMINISTRATION AND THE INTRODUCTION
OF DISCRETIONARY HOUSING PAYMENTS IN
GREAT BRITAIN
BRUCE WALKER AND PAT NINER
This paper is concerned with how administrators in the Housing Benefit (HB) service
in Great Britain have reacted to the discretionary powers given to local authorities as
a result of the introduction of Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs). DHPs can be
awarded to HB claimants deemed to require additional assistance with their housing
costs. The paper first argues that the HB service can be categorized as ‘rule-bound’
before outlining the DHP regime and the nature of the discretion that it affords HB
administrators. A brief review of the literature on discretionary decision making in
public service organizations suggests four propositions in respect of DHP decision
making. The paper then seeks to test these propositions. It concludes that in general
HB administrators do not appear to have experienced the difficulties associated with
discretionary decision making in rule-bound services that might have been expected
on the basis of previous work in this field.
INTRODUCTION
In this paper we discuss how a predominantly rule-bound public service has
reacted to the expansion of its discretionary powers. The service concerned
is local authority Housing Benefit (HB) administration. In 2001, local author-
ities were given the power to award Discretionary Housing Payments
(DHPs) to HB and Council Tax Benefit (CTB) claimants deemed to require
additional assistance with their housing costs.
The paper proceeds as follows: the first section argues that the HB service
can be categorized as a rule-bound service although, as the second section
outlines, there has been limited scope for the exercise of discretion in the
past. The DHP regime and the nature of the discretion that it affords is then
briefly described, before we present an inevitably synoptic review of the
literature on discretionary decision making in public service organizations.
This review suggests four propositions in respect of DHP decision making
that, after outlining the study on which this paper is in part based, the
penultimate section of the paper seeks to test. The final section presents our
conclusions.
Bruce Walker and Pat Niner are in the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham.
48 BRUCE WALKER AND PAT NINER
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005
THE HOUSING BENEFIT SERVICE: A RULE-BOUND
ORGANIZATION?
Currently about one-third of private rented sector (PRS) tenants and two-
thirds of social housing tenants (tenants of housing associations and local
authorities) receive HB (Kemp 2000). Claimants in both the PRS and social
rented sectors are subject to a means test. The majority of PRS tenants, and a
small number of housing association tenants, must also have their rent
assessed for HB purposes by the independent Rent Service whose officers
can and frequently do determine a rent that is less than the actual rent
charged for the dwelling. This can lead to a claimant otherwise eligible for
full HB having to make up any ‘shortfall’ between their actual rent and their
HB entitlement from his/her own resources.
HB is arguably unique in being a redistributive service that is almost
exclusively funded nationally, delivered according to criteria of eligibility
that are also determined nationally but administered by local authorities.
The administration of the service is recognized as difficult. As an indication,
even the best performing English local authorities in 2000/1 took 36 days to
process a new HB claim (Audit Commission 2002, para. 3). As the Audit
Commission states: ‘It is not easy to administer a means-tested benefit that
takes account of a variety of frequently changing income and housing-related
needs and is paid regularly to a large number of people’ (2002, para. 4).
The key feature of HB administration for our purposes is the highly pres-
cribed rules under which it operates. There is an extensive set of detailed
regulations governing HB and expenditure is audited in relation to these
regulations. There is a large manual containing government guidance on the
scheme which is regularly updated – 50 different notifications about HB
administration were made by the Department for Work and Pensions
(DWP) in 2001 alone (Audit Commission 2002, para. 3). Further, the system
governing, for example, the subsidy received by authorities reclaiming ‘over
payments’ of HB incentivizes administrators to follow government rules on
how, in what circumstances and from whom such over payments are to be
reclaimed.
The rule-bound nature of HB administration is exemplified by the very
detailed requirements for determining a claimant’s eligibility, what is to
count as evidence for eligibility and how it is to be assessed that DWP iden-
tify in the Verification Framework (Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
2001a – ‘VF’). In 2002/3, 79 per cent of authorities were compliant with the
VF (DWP Personal Communication). The VF
sets out the information which must be collected and verified before benefit
is paid, specifies the minimum standards of evidence and the checks that
must be made during the life of the claim’. (DWP 2001a, para. 1.4)
The VF provides checklists for managers to ensure ‘that staff are conducting
their own checks accurately and effectively, and that payments are correct’
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