Stoke-on-Trent tackles benefit fraud

Hundreds of benefits cheats who pocketed £3.7 million in illegal payments have been exposed in a crackdown on bogus claims.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council has stepped up action on fraud and has now prosecuted 200 people through the courts, with at least 36 receiving prison sentences. Now the authority has pledged to spend £210,000 beefing up its anti-fraud team amid concerns national benefit reform will tempt more residents to cheat the system.

• Housing and council tax benefit fraud is rising. There were 59 prosecutions and 91 penalties and cautions in 2010/11 with overpayments of £505,181 identified, rising to 68 prosecutions and 97 penalties with £716,000 in overpayments for 2011/12 so far
    
• Last year 1,421 people were discovered wrongly claiming a 25% single person's discount on council tax, costing the council £519,415 in underpaid tax
    
• A four-year project to root out couples who claim to live at separate addresses to claim higher benefits has identified £1.8 million in overpayments. A total of 73 people have been prosecuted, 22 of them receiving prison sentences, while a further 30 separate cases are awaiting court dates. The DWP has been highlighting the cost of single person fraud. In Stoke one person was overpaid by £63,626, while an ongoing case is expected to find another person wrongly claimed up to £100,000.

The authority relies on tip-offs from residents in most cases, but also carries out its own investigations and uses RIPA powers to spy on false claim suspects.

Social housing fraud

The authority has become one of the most successful in the country at tackling housing tenancy fraud like illegal sub-letting of council houses. A total of 44 properties have been recovered since a crackdown began in March with a further eight 'notices to quit' served and 11 cases awaiting court action. Rising housing tenancy fraud is keeping hundreds of families stuck on waiting lists while scores of properties are occupied illegally.
Housing fraud exposed by the city council so far includes:

• Application fraud, where tenants have obtained properties by lying about their circumstances
  
• Tenancy succession fraud, where the legal tenant dies or moves out but friends or relatives keep the house
  
• Sub-letting, where a tenant rents out the council's property to rake in personal profits.

Paul Bicknell, the council's corporate fraud manager, said

It's crazy to have to pay £210 a week for temporary accommodation when, out of our 19,300 council houses, a proportion of them are being fraudulently let.

Given the number of properties we've recovered it seems to be the case that it's very prominent. It's the single biggest fraud cost to local authorities.