Fraud & error at Stoke-on-Trent

Auditors have uncovered hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of fraud and bureaucratic errors in a routine sweep of council finances at Stoke-on-Trent, which recently announced a toughened blue badge regime.

The National Fraud Initiative checks, which are still ongoing, have already found more than £300,000 in fraud and administrative errors after checking data provided by the City Council.

The checks involve cross-referencing 13 sets of data, ranging from housing and council tax benefit claims to disabled blue badge permits, bus passes, market traders' licences and even details of council staff salaries and the authority's payments to creditors.

A report on the progress of the inquiries said the 835,580 separate records have turned up 12,243 matches which may require further investigation. The matches mean the same person may be claiming several different benefits.

So far, the council has investigated almost a third of the matched records, which have led to the discovery of mistakes and suspected fraudulent transactions totalling £309,306.

This figure includes overpayments by the council totalling £124,491 during 2008/09, including £94,053 paid mistakenly to the authority's creditors. The errors are all said to have happened during the transfer of the council's accounting service to a new computer system. Private residential care home overpayments, totalling £184,815, were also detected through the initiative, but these had already been identified by the council's own checking system and are being recovered.

The investigation has also found £3,827 was fraudulently claimed in council tax benefit, triggering plans to clamp down on loopholes in the system.

The council has also cancelled more than 1,000 bus passes and almost 500 blue badges in cases where the owner's death had not been reported to the authorities.

Councillor Paul Billington, audit committee chairman, called on fellow members to help the audit team by passing on any reports from residents of benefit fraud occurring in their wards.
He said: "I would urge all members to come forward with any information they have, so we can boost these fraud results and reduce the overpayments."