Checking eligibility

To ensure that only eligible households were receiving the Single Person Discount, the London Borough of Sutton asked us to complete a review. This 12-week review sees our experienced team manage the entire process from end to end, from validating existing claims to writing to residents and updating records accordingly.

The project kicked off in November 2025 when the council provided an extract of more than 25,000 accounts. It was followed by a rigorous data matching exercise where we were able to confirm that around 5,000 of those accounts needed further investigation.

Managing all customer contact

Letters were sent to households, followed by reminder letters three weeks later to those that hadn’t responded. During this time, we managed all customer contact through our dedicated online response, telephone and postal service.

After six weeks, we identified that just over 1,000 households had failed to respond, enabling us to cancel the discount. We then allowed a four-week reinstatement period to capture any late responders, reinstating the discount where applicable.

Maximising council tax revenue

Our review service identified £515,000 in extra revenue, with an average cancellation value of £468.18 for every Single Person Discount removed. And as we managed the customer contact, the service kept the busy in-house team focused on what matters.