Telephone and electronic claims

Q. What do we need to do as a LA if we want to offer telephone claiming?

A. You must first design a process that allows you to gather and record all the information you need while identifying for the claimant what evidence they need to supply to support that claim. You must then decide whether or not you will issue a statement to the claimant to sign and return to you, or whether you simply wish them to confirm the information they have supplied so that they can correct any mistakes. Once you have designed this process you must publish a telephone number which the claimant can call to access this service.

Q. What do we need to do as a LA if we want to offer electronic methods of claiming?

A. Again you must design a process that gathers all the information you need, informs the customer of what evidence they need to supply and issues a statement for signature if needed. You should also allow the claimant to print out the details they have submitted for their future use.

Your Chief Executive then has to issue a direction which sets out the areas of HB/CTB administration that may use electronic methods. Further details are available in Circular A18/2006 (50KB) .