A COUNCIL under fire for the length of time it takes to deal with housing benefit claims has been given a £120,000 cash handout from the Government and ordered to make sure things improve.

But the company responsible for dishing out housing benefit for Blackburn with Darwen Council today warned that things would not get better until the Government sorted out its out tax credit chaos.

The council has been beset by problems since Capita took over the handling of benefits.

A variety of reasons have been blamed, including problems with new software and the fact that while Capita can process applications the council still has the legal responsibility to sign them off .

The average time to process a new claim in Blackburn with Darwen is 71 days, compared to a national average of 51 days, and 41 days by top-performing authorities.

Only one other council in East Lancashire is performing worse - Rossendale Council -- where it takes 90 days - but that council is receiving support to turn things around and are also receiving extra Government cash of £268,000.

Blackburn with Darwen's money will be spent on recruiting and training processing and assessment staff.

But Terry Boynes, director of Capita's Blackburn Business Centre, says the problem currently lies with the Government's shake-up of the tax credits system which involves people who previously were entitled to three different types of tax credit or benefit having to be reassessed for two new types of credit, which has created a backlog.

Mr Boynes said: "When assessing the claim for housing benefit, we have to take into account which tax credits people are entitled to. If they haven't got that information because there is a backlog, there is not a lot we can do. We are trying to move things along as quickly as we can.

"A simplification to the verification process means that, by October 2004, we will be down to our target of 35 days for new claims."