Benefits Customer Service Commitments

Service standard commitments

Harrow Benefit and/or Council Tax Support new claim form

  • We aim to have a first look at your Harrow new claim form and issue a response within 10 working days. If we need more information, we may not be able to assess your claim at this point.  If that is the case, we will write to you to tell you what we need.  We may also try to phone you to inform you of what is needed.

Correspondence

This includes things like changes of circumstances, evidence to support a claim and requests for information. Any emails or telephone call-back requests for Benefits, submitted via another Council service and forwarded on to the Benefits service will be classed as correspondence.

  • We aim to deal with your correspondence and issue you with a response within 15 working days

Disputes

This is a request to dispute the decision made on your Housing Benefit, Council Tax Support or Discretionary Housing Payment

  • We aim to consider your request and respond to you within 2 months. If we are unable to make a decision on your dispute at that time, we will write to you to ask for more information.

Appeals

 this is a formal appeal against the decision made on your Housing Benefit or Council Tax Support

  • We aim to consider your request and respond to you within 2 months.  Please note that if your appeal is not upheld by the Council, it will need to be submitted to the Tribunal Service. They have their own timescales to respond by.  We will tell you if we submit your appeal to the Tribunal Service  

Discretionary Housing Payment

  • We aim to consider Discretionary Housing Payment applications within 2 months of receiving them.  We will contact you either to advise you of our decision or to ask for more information to support your application.  

Complaints

Electronic communications

  • If you submit an online form we will confirm receipt of the form within 1 working day