From the DWP
[quote:f90f6f6ce0]One of the new items requested under personal details is the claimant’s ethnic group. As a public body, the department has an obligation under the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000 to monitor the impact of its policies on race equality. The Housing Benefit 100%
administrative data will be used as one of the key sources of data for analysing and monitoring the department’s Housing Benefit policies. The department has an obligation to make sure that all analysis of policy includes consideration of the impact on race equality. In order to allow such analysis, the dataset needs to include an ethnicity variable.[/quote:f90f6f6ce0]
Our problem
We now have a legal duty to monitor gender disability and race. The DWP data does not cover that. In order to comply with our equality duties, we changed our claim form and included a section on the back of the form to seek all of the data we are now required to monitor. We have left this to be entirely voluntary. We detach this page from the claim form and do not store those details on the benefit computer system, instead we use a separate database. However should I advise my current LA to comply with the DWP data requirements? The DWP want us to record this data on our benefit system and therefore it will be held against the claim. I am of the opinion that this is excess information and would therefore be unlawful as nationality data has no impact on the claim for benefits.
I am a bit stuck on this one.
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