HOUSING benefit applicants in Merseyside are having to wait almost a month for their claims to be processed, according to new figures.

Between April 2017 and March 2018, new claimants in Knowsley and St Helens waited on average 27 days before their application was completed, according to data from the Department for Work and Pensions.

That’s above the British average of 22 days, which includes weekends.

Applicants in Wirral waited an average of 26 days, while those in Sefton and Liverpool waited 24 and 23 days, respectively.

This waiting time can be worrying for applicants, and the charity Turn2Us said they can be threatened with eviction and face homelessness.

Councils are legally required to respond within two weeks, or as soon as is practical.

According to the figures, Merseyside’s local authorities processed 25,922 new cases over the 12 month period.

In total there were 129,980 housing benefit claimants in Merseyside in February 2018, which is the latest publicly available data.

Residents are eligible for housing benefit if they rent, are on a low income or other benefits, and if their savings are below £16,000.

The amount applicants receive differs depending on whether they rent from the council, or privately, their salary and whether they have any spare rooms.

The region’s local authorities were quicker at dealing with current claimants who had changed their living circumstances.

Those applications took on average one week to complete.

The charity Turn2Us, which helps people with financial hardship gain access to welfare benefits, has warned that delays in processing benefits can have a serious impact on the applicants’ lives.

Pritie Billimoria, head of communications, said: “Housing benefit is not a luxury people can afford to wait for.

“It is not good enough that the average wait is almost twice as long as the legal requirement and with the minimum wait for Universal Credit at 35 days, people are simply being dragged into a waiting game that they cannot afford.

“At best, these delays and long waiting times are leaving people on the brink of losing the roof over their head and at worst are pushing people into homelessness.”

Wirral Council Head of Customer Services, Lisa Jamieson said: “Demand for benefit services was high in 2017/18 and continues to increase this year since the full introduction of Universal Credit Full Service, and this is not unique to many local authorities who are seeing an increase in the time it takes to process new claims.

“Wirral has commissioned extra resource to process claims and this is already having a positive impact on timings, meaning the age and volumes of our claims has reduced. The aim that we will move to be lower than the national average and we are working closely with DWP, who are satisfied with our action plan.

“The council’s benefit service works closely and extremely effectively with partners (including private and social sector landlords, the third sector, DWP/local Job Centre+) to fast track the cases involving hardship”.

A DwP spokeswoman said: “We spend around £23 billion a year on housing benefit – more than any other OECD country as a proportion of GDP.

“We work directly with each local authority to monitor housing benefit performance and this includes the speed of processing which has remained stable over a number of years.”

Liverpool City Council says it is one of the fastest cities in the country when it comes to processing new claims. A spokesman said: “The time it takes to process a new claim for Housing Benefit depends on a number of factors, including collecting any extra information needed from the application. For example this might include proof of income or rent.

“If you are claiming Housing Benefit the quickest way is to use our online form.

“People providing all the evidence needed will typically see their claim processed much more quickly than the average, which includes people who may be delayed in supplying all the information we need.”

When this data was collected, the Government had rolled out Universal Credit in Wirral and Sefton, but not Liverpool, St Helens or Knowsley.

A spokesperson for Sefton Council said: “Since the introduction of Universal Credit in 2017, we no longer accept most types of Housing Benefit claims.

“This change has had a slight impact on processing times of those claims which we do process, due to their complexity.”

“We work closely with the DWP in order to improve processing speeds and we continue to regularly provide support and advice to local residents to help make sure that their Housing Benefit is paid as quickly as possible.”

Claimants living in Knowsley and St Helens had some of the longest waits.

A spokeswoman for Knowsley Council said: “Due to drastic central Government funding cuts, the council has had to make £100m of savings since 2010 and all of our services have been reviewed to see where these savings can be made.

“We have also reduced reduced our own workforce and this has meant that many services simply cannot continue to operate at the same level.

“The council works closely with landlords – social housing and private – as well as our own homelessness service and we encourage landlords to contact us if they are considering taking action against tenants where housing benefit is outstanding in order for us to prioritise any cases where eviction is threatened.

“We are not aware of any cases where a tenant has been evicted due to delays in processing a new claim for housing benefit.”

A spokesperson for St Helens Council said: “The council continues to prioritise new applications for housing benefit, however claims can not be processed until applicants have provided all the necessary evidence to support their claim.

“We continue to work with applicants to ensure that any delays are minimised.”