Agenda item

(To receive a report which provides an update on the Council's fraud investigation activities and information on progress made against the Counter Fraud Work Plan 2014/15)

Consideration was given to a report which provided the Committee with an update on the Council's fraud investigation activities and information on progress made against the Counter Fraud Work Plan 2014/15. 

The Committee was advised good progress against the work plan for 2014/15 had been made and work in a number of key fraud pro-active areas had been completed, in particular around fraud awareness.

It was reported that seven fraud referrals had been received since April 2014.  Of these, there were currently three live cases and four which had been concluded.  There had been one successful prosecution since the last progress report which was a direct payments case, totalling just under £8,000.  The money was repaid in full to the Council by the perpetrator and they were also given a Community Service Order of 200 hours, and ordered to pay costs of £145.

Members were informed that all counter fraud and whistleblowing promotional material had been distributed throughout the Authority, including schools.  This would be supported by publications from the Council's Communication Team and repeated throughout the year to ensure maximum coverage.  It was also reported that officers had successful validated and uploaded data from 8 of the Council's systems for the 2014/15 National Fraud Initiative, a significant mandatory data matching exercise which was designed to provide participating bodies with the information to identify and investigate potential fraudulent transactions.  It was expected that the data matches for Lincolnshire County Council would be received early in 2015.

A £16m funding pot had been made available to local authorities to enable them to develop their counter fraud arrangements, and Lincolnshire County Council had submitted two bids which it was hoped would be successful, and the results were expected imminently.  It was noted that the two bids were for a grant for prosecution handling – to enable the Council to develop its capacity, expertise and governance framework to handle some or all of its fraud prosecution cases, and one for the Lincolnshire Fraud Partnership which recognised DCLG's desire for Local Authorities to work jointly against fraud, by creating a Lincolnshire Fraud Partnership which would comprise counter fraud specialists from the county council and the seven district councils.

Members of the Committee were provided with the opportunity to ask questions to the officers present in relation to the information contained within the report and some of the points raised during discussion included the following;

·         Schools which had converted to academies were able to make use of whistle blowing arrangements, and if they wished the authority would carry out fraud checks.  Officers would be carrying out some promotional work to make it known what services the authority could offer the academies;

·         It was confirmed that when somebody died, all relevant organisations were notified, but there could be a time lag with some of them.  However, the systems used in this process had improved greatly, including the interface between the adult care management system and the direct payments system;

·         It was commented that a care home had a duty of care and should know to inform the authority when a resident had died and if they were still receiving payments for that resident;

·         A joint protocol was being developed with safeguarding teams and social workers to deal with cases of suspected financial abuse;

·         It was noted that it was hoped that the NHS would at some point be included in the fraud partnership.  If they could be encouraged to join, then this would be a positive step;

·         How many hours officers spent preparing and investigating a suspected fraud case before handing it over to the police, was information that was needed to support the business case for the funding for the authority to carry out its own prosecutions.

RESOLVED

            That the outcomes of the counter fraud work be noted.