By Hannah Brindle In April 2005 the Business Link organisation, the vehicle used to deliver business support throughout England, will go local with responsibility for services transferred to Regional Development Agencies. In preparation for the move a model has been developed for the delivery of business support which brings together a coalition of support providers and local government agencies. The author describes how the model challenges the RDAs to deliver a genuine customer focus.

The cost of fraud and errors in the Housing Benefit system has fallen by about 60 million pounds according to new figures from the Department for Work and Pensions. It is now pushing for the last few local councils that have not signed up to the Verification Framework for benefits to do so.Latest estimates show roughly 600 million pounds of Housing Benefit was overpaid from April 2003 to March 2004, representing 4.9 per cent of the total expenditure. In the previous year around 700 million pounds was overpaid. The figures are rounded to the nearest 50 million, putting the actual difference between the amounts for the two years at the 60 million level.

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Hospital trusts, family doctors, and other organisations providing local health care are to be banned from using telephone numbers that charge patients excessively for calling NHS services in their area. The ban will mean patients will not have to pay for expensive premium and national rate calls to access local services.From April, NHS organisations will not be able to set up new premium and national rate telephone numbers for patients contacting local services. The Department of Health says the ban will be enforced through changes to the relevant legislation and guidance, including GPs’ contracts and directions to NHS Trusts. It will also apply to NHS opticians and doctors’ out of hours service providers. Dentists will be covered by the ban but in their case the relevant legislation will take longer to change and is not expected to take affect until the summer.

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