https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/housing-benefit-speed-of-processing-statistics-methodology-note/housing-benefit-speed-of-processing-statistics-methodology-note
4.3 Data validation
DWP excludes cases that, where SHBE data indicates, have taken more than 12 months to process from all HB SoP statistics. Quality assurance (QA) work indicates that the majority of these cases are a result of processing or software errors. Therefore, their inclusion in the HB SoP statistics would distort the calculation and provide an inaccurate picture of HB SoP performance.
Statistical code is then run against the individual level data to clean, link to other data sources to attach markers (including geographical) and the HB SoP measure is calculated, before aggregating up to monthly, quarterly and annual totals.
