Bassetlaw – Benefit Fraud
From Pam Simpson, Benefit Investigations Manager, Bassetlaw District Council
My boss breezed in the other day with a story about parking ticket excuses in Southwark.
“A UFO flying over Southwark was the reason one driver gave when he appealed his parking ticket” said the boss who went on to ask me if we get the same sort of excuses in the world of benefit fraud.
Well I suppose we do, we have had the woman who forgot she was married and the claimant who failed to see that her job at an opticians should have been declared. “She should have gone to…The Council…” said my boss. He thought that was funny, one of his better ones.
In our line of business, things are a bit too serious to go public with the funny side.
The recent Audit Commission report on ‘Protecting the Public Purse’ has again highlighted the need for local authorities to be vigilant in their efforts to keep fraud out of the public arena. Emphasis in the past has been on the monies lost through housing benefit fraud but now the government appears to have moved away from this area and into housing fraud. So where does that leave benefit fraud? Despite new initiatives by the DWP and continued vigilance by councils, fraud is still for many reasons prevalent in the benefit system. A quick Google search on benefit fraud resulted in over 3 million entries, a not insignificant figure.
The withdrawal of fraud reporting to the DWP has even led to some councils reviewing their requirements for fraud resources even the evidence suggests that it is still in the system and being detected on a large scale by local authorities all over the country. Fraud teams throughout the country however continue to do what they do best despite the continued downgrading of their role.
At Bassetlaw District Council there is an acknowledgement of the need for fraud investigation and this is reflected in the work that the investigators do. The fraud team is small which potentially restricts the type of cases they could realistically deal with however the local DWP FIS team is also small and conveniently just up the road. The relationship between the two teams has been built up over many years and reflects joined up working at its best. Joint interviews are undertaken regularly and problems ironed out in the first instance and there is always support for surveillance and employer visits.
The council has also increased the number of joint cases taken through the courts using the authority granted to them by the Welfare Act. On April 19th 2010, 9 cases were heard at the Worksop Magistrates of which 6 were joint with the DWP (2 of which were dealt with by DWP prosecutors). Of those cases 8 pleaded guilty and one case was adjourned to enable the defendant to consult a solicitor. Sentences ranged from a 12-month discharge to fines and community orders with unpaid work. For a small authority with limited resources it was a successful day. A further three joint cases are currently being prepared for court in June.
In the grand scheme of things this is not huge but factor in the other small local authorities achieving the same results and you realise just how much fraud is still out there. It’s said about UFOs that the truth is out there, in our line of work it’s the dishonesty that keeps us busy.