In our report Protecting the public purse: fighting fraud against local government and local taxpayers, we describe what has happened in the field of fraud detection and prevention since 2009 and set out the findings from our recent fraud survey. We identify more fraud risks and urge local councils and related bodies to focus on them
Last year England’s councils detected around £99 million worth of benefit fraud, over £15 million worth of council tax fraud, and £21 million worth of other types of fraud including false insurance claims, and abuse of the disabled parking ‘blue badge’ scheme. In addition nearly 1,600 homes have been recovered by councils with a replacement cost of approximately £240 million.
We also describe the action taken by some councils to tackle fraud and provide links to tools to help councils improve their counter-fraud defences. Our updated checklist gives organisations providing public services 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.