Issue - meetings
Progress on National Fraud Initiative 2010 and New Initiative 2012
Meeting: 26/03/2013 - Audit Committee (Item 6)
6 Progress on National Fraud Initiative 2010 and New Initiative 2012 PDF 102 KB
To note the report.
Additional documents:
- 6.3a NFI summary as at 11 Feb 13 - Appendix A, item 6
PDF 37 KB
- 6.3b NFI summary as at 11 Feb 13 - Appendix B, item 6
PDF 44 KB
Minutes:
Tony Qayum, Corporate Antifraud Manager presented the report circulated at item 6.3 which provided an update on the current progress of the National Fraud Initiative 2010 and gave an overview of antifraud work undertaken taken in the past six months. He highlighted the following matters:
- methodology and scope of the exercise detailed in paragraphs 4.2 - 4.4
- outcomes reported in paragraph 5 had provided more useful data than had previously been available
- the antifraud team proposed to look at lessons learned from the data matching exercise in 2010 and how this information could be better used in its next audit of this kind
In response to Members’ questions the following information was provided:
The NFI exercise had revealed that 33 people living across London had been involved in overpayments of housing benefits made through Tower Hamlets. Mr Qayum noted that, were any Council employee found to be involved, it would be considered gross misconduct and the matter investigated.
In discussing whether the Council quantified the costs of recovery action against losses if action were not taken, the Committee was advised that there was no effective way of knowing the costs of recoveries as these varied from incident to incident and so it was not possible to determine whether prosecution was more efficient than other sanctions that could be applied. It was noted that the Department for work and pensions tended more towards prosecution.
RESOLVED:
That the report to be noted