COUNCIL bosses have drawn up a rescue plan to salvage a beleaguered benefits service -- and apologised to thousands of people affected by backlogs.

Blackburn with Darwen councillors drew up a Benefits Service Development Plan after a review in June and said it should be back on track by the end of next month.

Capita, the company which runs the benefits service, has also called in one of its most senior managers to carry out an internal assessment.

Over the past four weeks, 6,000 items have been removed from the backlog and councillors will be given an update at a meeting tomorrow.

The service, which deals mainly with housing benefit, has been beset by problems since Capita took over in March 2001.

A variety of reasons has been blamed, including problems with new software and Government changes to the way benefits are paid.

Average time to process a new claim in Blackburn with Darwen is 72 days, compared to a national average of 51 days, and 41 days by top-performing authorities. Last year, a new application took 76 days.

In February 2002, a council committee told Capita it had to improve after a series of measures introduced in December saw no improvement.

In July, Capita boss Rod Aldridge promised to turn things around and make his department the country's best after it was awarded a Government grant of £120,000 to sort out problems.

In July 2001, Lambeth Council in London severed a £48million contract with Capita after the number of outstanding benefits queries became too high.

Terry Boynes, a Capita director, said 24 extra staff had been hired and money invested. He added: "We are targeting the end of October, and are pretty confident of meeting that.

"We have apologised on a number of occasions and we are quite happy to do so again. We were asked by the Council to improve the service and that meant putting in a new IT system, which unfortunately hit the service."

The new plan will also see regular meetings between Capita and council chief executive Phil Watson to monitor progress.

Blackburn Conservative group leader Coun Colin Rigby expressed concern when Capita's contract in Lambeth came to an end.

Today he said: "We have not been happy with the service for some time. There is no denying the problems, but Capita has not been helped by government changes.

"I am not trying to defend Capita but it wasn't any better when Blackburn with Darwen ran the service. We all want it back on track and hopefully this plan will achieve that."

Damon Lawrenson, a revenue and benefits manger for Blackburn with Darwen said it still had 10,500 items still to clear and added: "There are areas of improvement that we could all point at. We can all look back and say we could have done things differently."