Housing and council tax benefits administration in England: a long-term perspective on the performance of the local government delivery system

This paper evaluates the performance of the Council Tax and Housing Benefits Administration Services delivered by local authorities since the current system for the delivery of these benefits was introduced. During this period the performance of local government has been regulated and influenced by four successive national delivery regimes imposed by central governments namely Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT); Best Value (BV); Comprehensive Performance Assessments (CPA) and Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA). An earlier paper (XXXX et al. forthcoming) examined the CPA period in detail and found a significant improvement in performance across all types of authorities in all parts of the country during this period. The current paper is intended to complement this earlier analysis and provide a longer term perspective on the performance of the benefits service under successive regimes between 1993 and 2010. The findings show that under CCT the performance of the system was poor, there were wide variations in individual local authority’s performance, with many acknowledged inadequacies in the system and unacceptably high levels of fraud. However in this period and in the subsequent BV period the antecedents of some of the tools and techniques subsequently used to drive improvement in the CPA era were either put in place or were being developed

Comprehensive performance assessment and public services improvement in England? A case study of the benefits administration service in local government

The purpose of this paper is to independently evaluate the impact of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime on one particular public service, namely the provision of Council Tax and Housing Benefits distributed by local authorities throughout the course of the regime. This service was assessed in every iteration of the CPA methodologies and it included one of the few key performance indicators (KPIs) where the definition of the performance indicator, the means of collection and the public reporting of its results, remained the same throughout the CPA period between 2002 and 2008

The Importance of Developmental Science for Studies in Bullying and Victimization

Research on bullying and victimization, especially in school settings, has become an important area of developmental research, with strong practical implications. In this article we overview some considerations from neuropsychology, quantitative genetics, developmental neuroscience, we discuss CU traits and conduct problems, individual, group, class and school levels of analysis, developmental changes by age and context, and cross-cultural aspects. Together we argue that these can help bring about a developmental science perspective on to this area of research

Unsteady supersonic aerodynamic theory for interfering surfaces by the method of potential gradient

A generalized solution of the hyperbolic wave equation was further developed to relate the velocity components at a field point to the potential gradient distribution in the dependence domain. Singular integrals were evaluated in closed form, with numerical integration methods for more complex but analytic functions. Idealization of the lifting surfaces by trapezoidal elements with two sides parallel to the streamlines is computationally efficient. Streamwise integrals were performed analytically, and spanwise integrals were neccessary only on element leading and trailing sides. All integrands vanish on the Mach cone. Pressure distribution on a double delta wing and generalized aerodynamic coefficients for three AGARD planforms were calculated and compared with available results

Random Curves by Conformal Welding

We construct a conformally invariant random family of closed curves in the plane by welding of random homeomorphisms of the unit circle given in terms of the exponential of Gaussian Free Field. We conjecture that our curves are locally related to SLE$(\kappa)$ for $\kappa<4$.Comment: 5 page

Nature of fault planes in solid neutron star matter

The properties of tectonic earthquake sources are compared with those deduced here for fault planes in solid neutron-star matter. The conclusion that neutron-star matter cannot exhibit brittle fracture at any temperature or magnetic field is significant for current theories of pulsar glitches, and of the anomalous X-ray pulsars and soft-gamma repeaters.Comment: 5 AAS LaTeX pages 1 eps figur