“Its not that we are taking food out of mouths, it is landlords” says Louise Pringle, ERC’s person in charge of Universal Credit Housing Benefits.

At last weeks meeting of the Audit & Scrutiny Committee this lady tried to explain why her department has performance issues and she made the statement.

This related to late payments of housing benefit.

It would appear that it is alright to have delayed payments to landlords.

In addition she attempted to explain away why her department had made significant errors in reporting how well they had performed, until external audit came along and proved that the departments figures were highly inflated.

Head of department Louise claimed that was due to their own selective performance indicators concentrating on under performers.

However this was blown out of the water when the external auditor confirmed that their sampling was totally random.

Cllr Ireland who said at the last meeting she did not wish the Head of the department to be questioned, failed to show for this meeting.

Did she throw a big huffy because she did not get her way?

Cllr Fletcher undertook his usual political rhetoric and on this occasion blamed the Conservative Government and George Osborne for the problems in the housing benefit team of ERC.

Only to be shot down in flames by the Head of Department who explained that it was the Scottish Government who had implemented and were due to implement more administration duties on ERC with regards to Universal Credit and Grants etc.

Mr Fletcher also said that ERC were not being properly compensated by central government in relation to the work that they undertake with regards to housing benefit being linked to Universal Credit.

ERC have always paid housing benefit, however since Universal Credit came into force they have to link those payment to DWP for the 3,700 claimants.

To date ERC have been paid an additional, circa £2 million pounds to do so.

Mr Fletcher did not ask any further questions........................

Request to Cllr Jim Swift.

Please switch your microphone on when you are speaking.

Cllrs sit with their backs to the public gallery and the accoustics in the chamber are very poor, if the microphone is not switched on it is difficult for some to hear what is being said.

Please do not be a Danny Devlin............