Universal credit roll-out delayed

Yesterday’s Independent on Sunday (IoS) carried a story saying that the Universal Credit (UC) project has been placed on a Treasury list of projects in crisis. They say that despite assurances from Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) that UC will be rolled out on time and on budget, its national launch – scheduled for October next year – will now be limited to small regional projects.

Sources within the DWP have told The IoS that a realistic national roll-out, regardless of the department’s public assurances, is already a year behind schedule amid fears that “technical issues over computer software” could push that back further. Senior DWP staff working on the project are understood to have reported concerns to their Treasury counterparts. The issue is reported as being a factor in Mr Duncan Smith remaining at the DWP during the recent Cabinet reshuffle.

For the whole story, see Benefits reform under threat after IT glitch (be warned that the Independent website seems very glitchy and may freeze your computer for a few seconds whilst loading the link)

On a similar subject the last issue of Private Eye reported that there are serious concerns about HMRC’s ‘real time information’ (RTI) scheme which is inextricably linked to UC.

According to the Eye a majority of HMRC’s advisory panel on PAYE have written some sort of report outlining their concerns about the ability of all this IT to work properly in the timescales set out and to give their doubts about the security of the propsed system. The Eye also notes that there does not apear to be a contingency plan in case it doesn’t work and the person in charge of all this has left to take up a new post in New Zealand!

It’s all a bit worrying!

I haven’t got around to reading my Private Eye yet, but I wonder whether the report referred to is the one from the All-Party Parliamentary Taxation Group (APPTG), entitled PAYE at the Crossroads (pdf file) - they’re not referring to the soap motel either.

This report says that Real-time information reporting (RTI) is “undoubtedly the biggest change to PAYE since its introduction back in 1944”, and concern is expressed that the timetable for its introduction has been driven by policy linked to the introduction of universal credit rather than on a sound business case. Noting that the Treasury Select Committee has said that “the history of large IT projects subject to policy-driven timescales has been littered with failure”, the APPTG says that, taking into account the challenge involved in all employers migrating to the new system in time for October 2013 and for RTI to be integrated with payroll practice, it is “potentially undeliverable”.

In addition, the APPTG expressed concern that HMRC underestimated RTI’s costs, highlighting that whilst £108m was allocated by the Treasury in the 2010 Spending Review, costs have already increased to more than £200m. They note that the “interim solution” being used to deliver the new system means that “there is no guarantee that RTI will be either real time or accurate”. With HMRC having also experienced a glitch during the RTI piloting, meaning that it made 87,798 matches against the APPTG’s estimation that it should have made over 1 million, they report that:

”.. a senior source within DWP has informed us that there are parties with great discomfort over the interim solution, as they do not consider it accurate enough for the purposes of universal credit. Their preferred option is a self-reporting regime that would be supported by RTI for checking purposes. However, this is not the policy of DWP ...”

I’m sure that is the report mentioned, I look forward to seeing what Lord Freud finds to say about the progress of UC!

I’m afraid that (probably due to computer illiteracy on my part) I seem to have logged in as my esteemed colleague Sue, it was in fact me that originated the first posting.