Disclosure Log

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Question

This FOI seeks to understand what Councils are currently doing to identify and tackle public sector fraud. 1. Does the Council have a Counter Fraud Team or persons in the Council responsible for investigating public sector fraud cases? 2. If so, how many fraud investigators do you have? 3. If not, are you part of a shared counter fraud service with another council or other organisation? Please detail who. 4. Did the Council’s benefits/counter fraud team transfer to SFIS when SFIS was established? 5. Has the Council increased/decreased the number of fraud investigation officers within the last 24 months? If so, by how many? 6. How many fraud referrals or reports of fraud did the council receive in financial year 207/18? 7. Please supply a notional value for fraud successfully stopped and/or prosecuted in 2017/18? 8. Do you record fraud statistics? If so, are they published? Where? Online? 9. How do you record and manage your fraud cases? Spreadsheet or software package? 10. Do you use a fraud case management system? If so, which one? 11. How many referrals/cases did you receive from the NFI (National Fraud Initiative) in 2017/18? How many led to a successful prosecution/outcome? 12. Do you use reports from NAFN? If so, how much did you spend on these in 2017/18? 13. Do you use credit bureau reports/data/services? If so, how much did you spend on these in 2017/18? 14. Do you have plans to increase your counter fraud capability/budget in 2018/19?

Answer

1. No Counter Fraud Team so we do not investigate Housing Benefit or other Benefit Fraud anymore, all done by the DWP. Internal Audit does investigate other cases of public sector fraud e.g. theft, financial irregularities etc… 2. None. Any investigations undertaken are absorbed within existing staff resource of internal auditors. 3. N/A 4. Yes. They transferred on the first working day of February 2016. 5. N/A see answer to Q4. 6. No statistics held. 7. No statistics held. 8. N/A see answer to Q4. Statistics stopped upon transfer of CF Team to SFIS. 9. N/A 10. N/A 11. None for 2017/2018. NFI produces data every 2 years, last produced for 2016/2017. For that year we received 3,142 cases for investigation. We cannot answer the second part to that question as we do not prosecute, we provide data to DWP and other public sector bodies from our NFI investigative work and it is up to them to decide on prosecution etc… 12. We are members of NAFN and pay the annual membership fee. 13. N/A 14. N/A