FOI request (FOI212727)

Counter Fraud

Requested Fri 28 April 2017
Responded Fri 28 April 2017

Oxford City Council are carrying out national research to determine the strength of Local Authority counter-fraud teams across the country. It would be very much appreciated if you could help with this research by taking a few moments to answer the following questions.

1. Does your authority have a Counter Fraud / Investigations team? If no, go to Q3.

    

2. Please advise the number of staff in the team and their job titles. Please include all staff in the team; Managers, Senior Investigators, Investigators, Intelligence and admin support staff, trainees and apprentices, and the number of each.

     

3. Does a third party provide a counter fraud function to your authority?  If so, who is the provider?

    

Response

Q1 - No – please see answer to question 3

Q2 - N/A

Q3 -

Hastings Borough Council is a member of the East Sussex Counter-Fraud Hub that received its initial financing from DCLG.  It consists of all of the Councils in East Sussex and all except Hastings Borough Council and Rother District Council have Corporate Fraud teams.  The main advantages for Hastings Borough Council belonging to this hub is that is has the ability to draw on professionally trained Investigators who can perform investigations to the Criminal Procedures and Investigations Act 1986 standards.  We additionally benefit from campaigns and counter fraud training.

We also have the following counter-fraud initiatives:

Council Tax Reduction Review Service:  This is a consortium of us and 12 other local authorities working in partnership with 2 private sector companies (Transactis and Capacity Grid).  Its key objective is to target fraud and error within the Council Tax Reduction caseload by applying sophisticated data matching and analytics.           

Fraud and Error Reduction Incentive Scheme (FERIS):  Rewards proactive identification of housing benefit fraud and reduction in error.

Cambridge City Council Northgate Partnership:  As a Northgate user, we are able to access a sophisticated data matching system developed by Cambridge City Council in partnership with Northgate for the identification of potential council tax reduction or housing benefit fraud.

National Fraud Initiative:  Long established national data matching exercise now managed by the Cabinet Office.

Ad-hoc reports of fraud are dealt with by the Council’s Chief Auditor.