Agenda item

This report details the performance of the Council’s Corporate Anti-Fraud Team (CAFT) and includes details of the team’s performance together with an update on developments during the period 1 April 2018 – 31 March 2019.

The Head of Anti-Fraud summarised the performance of the Anti-Fraud service and highlighted that in 2018/19 the service worked hard in strengthening the financial and risk management. This was a good year for the service with increased volume of work undertaken and strengths achieved.

An example of work achieved was around the misuse of disabled parking permits (Blue Badges). The results were of a very good and high quality standard with a tough stance taken and good resource input, and as a result, there was nine persecutions.

With questions raised by Members of the Committee in relation to the take up of the London Counter Fraud Hub, officers informed that there had been a commitment from all thirty-two London boroughs to sign up, although to date no local authority had taken lead role, as there was still work for completion for a legal contract. As the Hub referred to a subscription, it was proposed for a London paid two-tier subscription. Croydon had not funded any subscription in this year.

Members further heard that CAFT was working with the London Councils, and the London Borough of Ealing was leading the project on behalf of all London boroughs and Croydon Council was piloting the project. Officers found that there were still ongoing work to finalise the contract arrangements. Looking ahead it was anticipated that most of the London boroughs would sign up to the Hub, and as work continued, officers would have a clearer picture in October of the numbers of subscriptions following legal paperwork completion.

Further questions from Members related to key performance indicators and “what a successful outcome looked like”. Officers highlighted that what was defined as a successful outcome was the piece of work that had a positive impact at the end, such as the council property being re-let to another family, or a blue badge being cancelled for misuse, therefore tangible outcome, cash savings and emotional savings.

In response to further queries raised by Members of the Committee on the blue badges and housing, the officers present clarified that:

-       The outcome had gone up and the value had gone down as the team worked very hard, and the concentration of the work attracted emotional value.

-       The service focused on what effected the residence the most and found that the misuse of blue badges was becoming a problem and the impact on parking misuse was becoming high. Having tackled the problem the affected area had improved.

-       Table 2 in the report had shown a breakdown of the outcomes from April 2018 to March 2019 in comparison to the same period in 2017-18 and saw that previously there were twenty-two incidents of blue badged abuse and there had been an increase since. To capture 5 more meant the service had to invest in time and money and this did not seem correct compared to the housing values.

-       The problem the service had last year was the number of high quality forged blue badges. Once reported, work was investigated immediately to capture the fraudulent activity. Last year the service provided more penalty charges and other ways in dealing with the matter, which focused around changing behaviours on the offender. The focus and goal this year was to penalise the offender by using the document as a final piece of evidence to present in court. The work around this would implement a different outcome to get to court.

-       Of the 19 recovered properties for the value of £342k and 8 recovered properties for the value of £144k, Members learned that the value was set up by the audit commissioner and that the council used a figure of £33k jointly with neighbouring local authority who also claimed emotional value for recovery too.

-       The key performance indicators were shown in an accurate value, as the target would be to recover property being occupied by a fraudulent council tenant.

-       There were no benchmark across London. The service were using their neighbouring boroughs to join Croydon to have a benchmark value. Looking at the outcomes, the service had dropped from nineteen to eight; there were still eleven homeless families. The service needed to relook at the value and encourage using the resources available.

-       There was an amendment to the last sentence in paragraph 5.1 in the local government transparency code where the detailed report covered the period from April 2018 to March 2019. The figures represent a full year.

The Chair welcomed the idea to have a cross-borough benchmark to have uniformity and a better stead.

The Committee RESOLVED to:

§   Note the Anti-Fraud activity of the Corporate Anti-Fraud Team for the period 1 April 2018 – 31 March 2019