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Audit Commission > National Fraud Initiative > Public sector > Probation

Probation

Probation bodies can participate in NFI on a voluntary basis for NFI 2012/13.

NFI can help probation bodies identify:

  • Illegal workers – Your payroll data will be matched to data from UKBA relating to In-Country immigration and Expired UK Visas. The matches will identify employees that potentially have no right to work in the UK.
  • Employees committing benefit fraud – NFI can match your payroll data to local state benefits data to identify employees who are potentially committing benefit fraud and may therefore also pose a serious fraud risk to your organisation.
  • Employees working elsewhere – Your payroll data will be matched to other organisations participating in NFI to identify where individuals maybe falsely claiming sick pay from your organisation while working elsewhere.
  • VAT overpayments – NFI identifies potential VAT overpayments on individual invoices. You may then be able to recover the overpayments. 
  • Duplicate payments – NFI matches your creditor payments to identify where you may have paid for the same goods or services more than once.  
  • Duplicate creditors – NFI matches your creditor’s data to identify where you may have creditors set up more than once on your system, this can lead to inefficiency and duplicate payments.
  • Employee interests – If you provide both payroll and creditors data NFI could match them to identify instances where an employee and creditor are linked by the same bank account or the same address to identify employees that potentially have interests in companies that your organisation is trading with.

Employers have a legal responsibility to check that they do not employ illegal workers. Under the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006, you could be liable for a fine of up to £10,000 per illegal worker. Taking part in the National Fraud Initiative can help you identify illegal workers and acts as a strong deterrent against fraudulent employment applications and employee identity fraud.

Over 300 individuals were dismissed or have resigned because of matches highlighted by recent NFI exercises. Many of the cases unearthed by the National Fraud Initiative relate to employees who had been working illegally for several years and could have continued to do so had they not been highlighted.

Flexible and real time data matching

The Audit Commission’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI) already plays an important role in protecting the public purse against fraud. The NFI can now do even more through our new flexible data matching service aimed at preventing as well as detecting fraud.

Fees

The fees for Payroll and Creditors screening are set out below. Fees for Bespoke screening are available on request.

Probation NFI fee 2012/13
All Probation Boards £1,000

Please note that the NFI is no longer deemed a vatable charge by HMRC (from July 2011) so VAT will not be levied.

Further Information

If you’d like more information about any aspect of the National Fraud Initiative, please contact us.