A REPORT has severely criticised the standard of the benefits service provided by Sedgefield Borough Council.

A six-month review of the service has revealed huge delays in processing claims and a massive backlog.

The council aims to process all new claims within 28 days, but the actual time taken is on average 102 days. New housing benefit claims are taking 114 days to process.

The review has revealed the department is underfunded, with low morale and high staff turnover.

Most of the problems, many of which are now being addressed, can be traced to the introduction of the new verification framework initiative 18 months ago.

The initiative, which attracted Government funding, aims to detect benefit fraud, but requires more information from claimants, greater checks, more home visits and complicated application forms.

Although staffing levels were increased, a backlog quickly developed, which led to more telephone calls and office visits. That took staff away from processing benefit claims.

Brian Allen, the council's director of finance, accepted the criticisms, saying the council has previously used a "light touch" in processing claims.

At a meeting of the council's scrutiny committee, he said: "We hadn't properly estimated how big a jump to verification that was going to be, and I hold my hands up for that."

Some measures to improve the situation have been put in place.

A private company was brought in to tackle the backlog, which stood at about 4,000 items, but is now less than 1,000. Another was enlisted to help set up a front counter team to deal with customers, leaving department staff free to process claims.

The review team said the department would need an additional £165,000 to bring it up to expenditure levels of top performing authorities.

Mr Allen said: "We have set our target and our aim is still to get within the 28 days for processing new claims by the end of this calendar year."