Issue - meetings

Nick Jennings from The Shared Anti- Fraud Service introduced the report. He referred to page 240 of the report which detailed the reduced amount of fraud referrals received by the service during the first three quarters of 2021/2022, and explained that the reasons for this reduction were trying to be understood. He said the majority of referrals received by the service related to Housing Benefit and Council Tax matters, and confirmed that there were 26 referrals relating to fraudulent Covid grants which required further review.  He added that all of the Covid grant referrals which had been administered by East Herts Council had been found to be correct, with no fraud found.

He drew the Committee’s attention to 4.8 of the report which referred to the output from the National Fraud Initiative (NFI), saying that this was a huge data matching exercise, and to 4.9 of the report relating to business grant schemes. He finished by saying that the targets set out in Appendix B of the report would be achieved by year end.

The Chairman thanked Nick Jennings for his report, and asked if the make up of the allegations received by the service remained the same. Nick Jennings said that most referrals were linked to Housing Benefit and Council Tax, and that discrepancies were due to error as well as fraud. He said that more referrals were expected in connection with housing, and so work had been done with housing teams and stressed the importance of encouraging reporting and sharing information. 

The Chairman asked about the membership of the service. Nick Jennings said that this had been static since Luton joined in 2017, but that the service did work with authorities outside of its membership.

The Chairman asked about progress of the Fraud Hub which had been discussed at a previous meeting of the Committee. Nick Jennings said that the Fraud Hub would be effective, but work was required to improve the data analytics which at present produced a lot of false positive results.

It was moved by Councillor Fernando and seconded by Councillor Huggins that the recommendations, as detailed, be approved. After being put to the meeting and a vote taken, the motion was declared CARRIED. 

RESOLVED – that (A) the Anti-Fraud Plan 2022/23 be approved; and

(B) the activity to protect the Council against fraud and corruption in 2021/22 be noted.