Cheques sign off
It may not be lamented but it is with a tinge of nostalgia that we this week report the demise of an icon of the 1980s: the housing benefit cheque.
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Cheques have been used to pay housing benefit since its introduction in 1983 and have provided security for many tenants ever since.
However, the writing has been on the wall for the ‘giro’ ever since it was announced last December that the use of cheques by banks would be phased out by 2018.
Housing benefit cheques, like unemployment benefit, are more susceptible to fraud than direct payments, and then there are the associated processing costs.
Axing them is clearly a no-brainer if payments direct to a recipient’s account cost one tenth of issuing the cheque.
In an age when the spiralling housing benefit bill (£17 billion and counting) is rightly coming under increasing scrutiny, the more efficiently the system can operate the better.