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The Rent Service

Speeding up the housing benefits process

The Rent Service (an Executive Agency of the DTLR) provides housing benefit providers with an impartial rental valuation for properties occupied by housing benefit claimants in the private rented sector. These assessments form a part of the process to determine how much financial support these claimants will receive to help with paying their rent.

The housing benefit process can frequently take time and as part of The Rent Service commitment to the Government’s Modernisation programme, The Rent Service engaged Parity to develop a more efficient and secure electronic processing system.

Zahur Amin, Parity’s project manager, explains:

“In the past, most housing benefit providers would fill in a form and send it to The Rent Service. Alternatively a small number of housing benefit providers would use a dial-up electronic transfer system which sent the applications to The Rent Service over a slow connection. But even with this electronic service, someone from The Rent Service had to re-key the information into their systems.”

Parity’s brief was to improve efficiency by setting up an electronic interface system which could send information more quickly to The Rent Service and help improve their response time. The ultimate aim being to improve the service to the 800,000 people who are claiming housing benefit and whose applications are referred to The Rent Service.

One of the key aims was to design a technical architecture which would make it considerably easier for other housing benefit providers, with their many and varied systems, to opt into the new way of working and would interface with The Rent Service’s new Application Software, VICTER.

Amin explains:

“The Rent Service required an easy technical interface based on open standards; they demanded security and wanted to meet the Government’s standards for e-business.”

XML was used to ensure valid data formats and secure Internet links were used for data transmission.

As a solution for The Rent Service, Parity has introduced a web server and a BizTalk Server as key features of the new technical architecture. The BizTalk Server receives, validates and routes documents. It is a Microsoft product and helps ensure value for money for The Rent Service, as Parity did not have to build this component. The BizTalk Server supports XML for data but also offers flexibility in the future because it can support many different formats.

The new solution also offers a status report facility so The Rent Service can keep housing benefit providers informed about what action is being taken if their valuation has been delayed.

Parity's account manager, John Totman explains,

“To ensure the data being transferred is secure, Parity introduced digital certificates which enable housing benefit providers to digitally sign all the relevant data. This is a service specifically for the people carrying out the benefits adjudications.

The people who use the interface have to be issued with a digital certificate to authorise them to gain access so The Rent Service knows that they are dealing with a bona fide user.

This project is a further example of Parity demonstrating its ability to work within stringent budgets without compromising on standards of service.

The point about this project was we had to deliver it in a very short time scale at a fixed price. We had to manage our own resources very effectively.”

Norman Foster, Head of Information Technology for The Rent Service said:

“By working with representatives of the housing benefit providers, their software providers and Parity, we have been able to move from concept to reality in a very short period of time. Now we want to encourage all housing benefit providers to link into the interface to provide all benefit claimants an improved service that offers speed and accuracy in the processing of housing benefit.”

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