ALMOST three years ago Capita took over the processing of housing benefits claims for Blackburn with Darwen Council and complaints started to pour in.

The company blamed the government's tax credit system, problems with software and the fact that the council legally had to sign off applications for a huge backlog which quickly built up.

The average number of days taken to process new claims rose to 78 - three weeks more than the national average and not far off twice the time top performing authorities were taking.

Matters got so bad that last year the government stepped in with a £120,000 cash handout and ordered the council and Capita to ensure things improved and they met their target for 2003/2004

Since then complaints have dropped and councillors have now been told that in December the average time for a claim was 46 days and 92 per cent of claims were done in 35 days.

Councillors have praised each other for this and Coun Frank Connor says "performance has improved dramatically over the past few months."

It would be churlish not to agree that significant progress has been made.

But the fact remains that despite Capita hiring 20 extra staff and putting in extra investment, the council's own 35-day target figure for all claims has not been met.

Self congratulation should be more muted until it has.