Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Financial Officer to advise and update Members on the Counter Fraud performance of the Benefit and Local Taxation Service from the 1^st January 2010 to the 8^th March 2010.

The Chair asked for a brief introduction of the report.

The Acting Head of Benefits & Local Taxation – Mr Biggadike advised the Committee that the Benefits and Local Taxation Service continued to maintain and further develop an effective approach to counter benefit fraud activity.  Since April 2009 BLT had achieved 74 successful sanctions against those found to be committing benefit fraud. During quarter 4 to date 2009/10 BLT achieved 21 sanctions and has a further 4 cases referred for prosecution. 

With regard to Overpaid Housing Benefit Mr Biggadike advised that to date, counter fraud activity had identified £1,022,322 in overpaid benefit and a further £15,151 in Administrative Penalties.  At this present time recovery performance in relation to all in-year created overpayments cannot be accurately stated due to a national known bug within Northgate’s software application. Northgate had predicted that this bug would be corrected in a software release due in June 2010.

Mr Biggadike gave a detailed update of the Council’s Anti-Fraud and Corruption Strategy – relating to Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit.  The Fraud Investigation Team in partnership with the Homelessness Investigations Unit had successfully made a joint bid for an integrated Intelligence and Case Management IT system and funding has been approved and a Project Manager appointed. Mr Biggadike further advised that the National Fraud Initiative had 1,279 Benefits recommended matches checked with a further 648 high and medium priority cases cleared to date. This would be treated as an area of priority from April 2010.   

The Chair thanked Mr Biggadike for his succinct introduction and asked if there were any points of clarification.

Councillor Dobbie, in welcoming the content of the report, referred to the issue of housing benefit overpayments and sought clarification as to how much of this equated to deliberate fraud and how much was not deliberate but an oversight. In response he was advised that failure to report was at the lower end and that when this happened the Council did not push for repayment but took payment over a period of time.  However prosecution was pursued for deliberate fraud and also other forms of fraud i.e. social security benefit.

In response to clarification from Councillor Meehan in respect of recovery figures for Council Tax Mr Biggadike responded that in the region of £600K would be recoverable.

There being no further comments the Chair summarised and it was:

RESOLVED

That the work being carried out by the Benefits and Local Taxation Service in relation to Counter Fraud activity, and the contents of the report be noted.