How quickly we will deal with your claim

We know how important it is to you that we deal with new claims and any changes you report to us as quickly as possible and we are always looking at new ways to improve our processing times.

To give you an idea of how long it could take, below are details of how we performed last month (January 2012).

On average it took us 31 days to deal with a new claim for housing/council tax benefit from receiving the claim form to processing the claim form. For new claims made by telephone we took 20 days per claim and 22 days to deal with a notification of a change in circumstances from receiving the notification to processing the change.

How we calculate the time it takes to process your claim or change of circumstances

We start counting from the date we receive your claim form or notice that your circumstances have changed.

The clock stops ticking when we have all the information we need to process your claim/change of circumstances.

If your new claim is fully completed and has all the evidence with it, we will aim to let you have our decision within 48 hours of receiving your claim.

This is why it is very important that you provide us with all the information we ask you for and it may even help us to process your claim/change of circumstances much quicker.

Also, if you don’t provide all of the information that we ask for (or if you provide it too late) we may not be able to process your claim/change of circumstances.

If you have any comments on how we are performing or any suggestions on how we can improve our benefit service to you please contact us.