The Housing Benefit service aims to process all properly completed claims forms (with associated evidence) within 28 days of receipt.

The Housing Benefit service is measured by a range of Government Performance Indicators and standards.

These measures indicate the level of performance a customer can expect on things such as the speed of processing

• Speed of processing new claims:

This measures how long it takes Nottingham City Council to process a fully completed application form, once the last piece of evidence to support the claim has been received.

• The Government standard is: 30 days
• Nottingham’s Performance is: 25.82 days (December 2007)

This performance is in the top 4 of the similar sized local authorities in the country.

• Speed of processing Changes in Circumstances

This measures how long it takes Nottingham City to process changes in circumstances, such as changes in incomes, rent levels, household membership, etc.

• The Government standard is: 9 days
• Nottingham’s Performance is: 12.87 days (December 2007)- please note that although this figure is higher than the Government standard, new ways of measuring this performance indicator have recently been adopted and have affected the apparent speed in which Changes are done- other Benefit Sections in other Local Authorities are experiencing similar increases in processing times for Changes, currently.