Changes to Change of Address, Single Person Discount and Discounts and Exemptions - June 2020

These are the changes that have been made to the COA form and associated integration:

1. Moves can be complex because you could have the scenario where:
   • A couple is liable until one date, one person moved out on a different date, the other person moved out on another and the furniture was moved out on another.
   • The reason this is complex is that whilst:
     • there are two occupants no discount is applicable
     • one person is resident a single occupancy discount (SPD) is applicable
     • no one is resident but furniture is still present an empty and furnished discount is applicable
     • no one is resident and no furniture is present an empty and unfurnished discount is applicable.
   • And this is made more complicated by the fact that this is true on both the property they're moving out of and moving into.
   • This release ensures that PCLC / PCLB0 / SPD awarded correct based upon relevant dates on move out, move in and move within
2. When applying discounts exceptions were sometimes being created because the back office Northgate application would not allow a discount to be added if one already existed.
   • So rather than simply end the existing one on the day, the new discount is required it would error and prevent the update
   • In this release, we have added a new intelligent check, which will look for the presence of discounts and end them from the date necessary prior to adding the empty property discounts required
3. When a person moves out on the same date as their furniture we have ensured only PCLC is applied
4. One of the smart things we do to prevent void accounts from being created is that we search the responsible parties on the property to work out which should be liable. Sometimes the data held is not great and causes this process to fail. Previously this would cause the process to stop and cause an exception. As this is a 'nice to have' function, now if we search for a landlord and we cannot locate them / there is an issue locating them, we will simply skip the stage and progress rather than ending the process.
5. We have fixed an issue where an empty occupancy discount is applied against a void account
6. We have fixed an issue to ensure that when doing a move within, we always set the landlord as liable on a void account if we know them
7. We have ensured that:
   • where a person is moving from one property to another within the council area and
   • the date they move into the new property is before the date they cease to be liable on their old property
   • we ensure we set them as liable from the earlier date not when they cease liability at the old address

These are the changes that have been made to the SPD form and associated integration:

1. We have ensured that the scenario where a partner has died works the same as when people have moved out i.e. it ends one account and creates a new one where the person that has passed away is not liable. Before we were ending them on the account only.
2. We have enhanced the solution so that when a person has passed away their title will be set to EXORS on the account that is ended.
3. We have fixed an issue with not being able to progress the SPD form when the citizen is attempting to cancel their single person discount.

These are the changes that have been made to the DD form and associated integration:

1. There is intelligence in the DD form to prevent Direct Debits from being set up where they have a poor history of paying Direct Debits and also where their recovery stages mean they cannot set one up. Because there are scenarios where the recovery team might want to override these checks as the citizen has made a payment etc., there is now an additional enhancement that will check for an override note type held in Northgate.
   • I.e. the recovery team adds a specific note type to the account to indicate that the normal checks we do should be overridden and they should be able to submit the DD form.