In our report 'Protecting the Public Purse 2011: Fighting Fraud Against Local Government', we describe what has happened since 2010 and sets out the findings from our recent fraud survey. England's councils have succeeded in detecting £185 million worth of fraud, an improvement of 37 per cent on last year's figure of £135 million. This is equivalent to a year's funding for around 700 libraries or the wages of up to 11,000 care workers. Also, councils recovered nearly 1,800 homes from tenancy fraudsters. To build those homes from new would have cost the public purse over £265 million.
We identify emerging risks such as fraudulent student council tax discount claims and fraud against social care payments to the elderly and vulnerable. We urge local councils and related bodies to focus on and tackle them, and improve their counter-fraud defences. Our updated checklist also gives organisations another opportunity to consider how effective they are at responding to the risk of fraud.
Also available is a single person discount comparator tool that allows local authorities to compare their levels of council tax single person discount with their predicted levels, based on a national average. We have also produced two briefing documents to specifically aid councillors in parish and town councils and governors in schools. These two documents can be downloaded below.