Issue - meetings

The Monitoring Officer introduced the Annual Fraud Report for 2019/20 the purpose of which was to appraise Members with details of identified fraud and counter fraud activity during the year 2019/20 and to provide assurance that policies, procedures and mitigations were in place to counter fraud activity. Members heard that there had been no fraud identified in relation to Authority activities however in relation to Revenue and Benefits fraud, there had been cases regarding Council Tax and Housing Benefit fraud.

There was discussion regarding how such fraudulent claims could come about and whether there were any local concerns with having the DWP in charge of detecting fraud and conducting the investigations. It was explained that the DWP had the resources to investigate on a much larger scale and that the local knowledge aspect was not lost as often it was the local team who identified cases of potential fraud.

It was acknowledged that other areas included within the policy, such as theft or bribery, had not been included in the report as there had been no reported cases.

RESOLVED that Members be assured that policies, procedures and mitigations are in place to counter fraudulent activity.