Protecting the Public Purse
A recent report from the audit commission has highlighted some alarming trends for fraud in the UK. In the current economic climate, is your local authority doing enough to protect its funds and ensure they are giving maximum benefit to your customers. See how INTEC’s market leading fraud solutions can help you in the ongoing fight against fraud.
According to the commission’s report there are key areas local authorities need to concentrate on, these include;
- housing tenancy fraud, which can be conservatively estimated to have reduced available social housing for allocation in England by nearly 50,000 properties;
- false claims for single person discount on council tax, estimated at £90 million each year; and
- recruitment fraud, which can have severe consequences and which fraudsters often exploit to commit other types of fraud.
- the amount lost through housing and council tax benefit fraud, after a period of decline, has recently increased;
- procurement frauds have involved large sums; and
- there is evidence of some misuse of social care direct payments.
They have outlined several recommendations in their report which can be downloaded from the Audit Commission’s web site. Here are a few key recommendations. Councils must;
- consider the possible impact of the recession on the risk of fraud and amend their counter-fraud plans if necessary;
- ensure they are doing all they can to address housing tenancy, single person discount (SPD) and recruitment fraud;
- work together in two-tier areas to share the costs and benefits of tackling SPD fraud;
- satisfy themselves that their vetting procedures for recruiting permanent and temporary staff accord with good practice;
- consider whether they have properly vetted staff already in post and take appropriate and risk-based action;
- ensure their arrangements for tackling housing and council tax benefit fraud are up-to-date, effective and address increased service demands’
- set clear targets and expected outcomes for the work of counter-fraud teams.
The question “Are you doing ‘something’ to tackle fraud within your local authority?” is no longer sufficient. Every council needs to ask themselves...
“Are you doing ‘enough’ to tackle and proactively identify fraud in your council?”
INTEC’s market leading fraud solutions give you all the tools you need to meet the increasing demands on the modern fraud team.
Consider the possible impact of the recession...
With a recession hitting the UK, there are an ever increasing number of people looking to claim housing benefits. Whilst making sure you are doing everything possible to “Bring benefits to the customer”, there is no doubt that the demand for benefits leads to an increase in the amount of fraud within the benefits system. Councils need to start thinking of fraud in a more proactive manner. How do they find and target potential fraudsters?
InSearch Intelligence gives you the tools you need to carry out detailed data mining exercises, allowing you to spot potential fraud within your own local authority. CSV data extracts can be taken from any source within your authority and easily loaded into InSearch. These can then be cross referenced and filtered according to your needs. Here are just a few examples of the type of searches you will be able to create;
- Matching your employee database against the HBMS/SHBE, to see if any of your existing employees are claiming benefit they are not entitled to.
- Cross reference extracts from debtors systems, to combat debt on a corporate basis
- earch your licensing files to identify potential claimants
Ensure you are doing all you can to address housing tenancy, SPD and recruitment fraud...
InSearch Intelligence can take files from your Housing, Council Tax and Human Resources departments. This corporate approach to data mining allows cross matches based on any number of fields such as (NiNo, DON, Address, and Surname)
- Matching your Council Tax file, against the housing file, will highlight if the actual tenants are different from the registered tenant
- This will also highlight if there are multiple contacts in an address where SPD is being claimed.
Working together in two-tier areas to share the costs and benefits of tackling SPD fraud;
InSearch Intelligence and InCase can be installed across various sites with single or multiple databases; this means that the implementation costs can be shared across site by reducing the number of service days needed.
InCase Intelligence allows your council to have several departments using the same case management software with all the same benefits & features. This gives you a full corporate case management solution that can be tailored to suit any department at minimal cost. To date InCase is being used in any and all of the following departments;
- Housing Benefit Fraud
- Internal Audit
- Corporate Fraud
- Anti Social Behaviour
- Domestic Violence
- Financial Investigations
Satisfy yourselves that you’re vetting procedures for recruiting accord with good practice and consider whether you have properly vetted staff already in post.
InCase Intelligence can quite easily fit into your human resources department as an employee database. It will allow to hold records on each employee the references they give and the contact details. Using InCase’s advanced automated diary facility you can easily track the references you have contacted, to follow up on outstanding replies and information requests.
The process management tools within InCase ensure that the strict vetting procedures you implement are followed, and exceptions to these procedures are recorded and audited. Management Information on all these systems and procedures can be generated via the built in report writing tool.
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Ensure your arrangements for tackling housing and council tax benefit fraud are up-to-date, effective and address increased service demands’
INTEC’s cutting edged fraud softwarehas been the market leader for a number of years, and the continuing development and consultation with our client base ensures that it helps you stay one step ahead in this challenging environment. INTEC’s customers have won the coveted IRRV (Excellence in Anti Fraud) Award in 2002, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2009 (runners up in 2003 and 2006) proving that there systems and procedures are very highly commended.
David Wright (Trafford Council – Winners in 2008) one of our newest customers said...
“I am very pleased with the service that INTEC have provided and the help that they have given us in setting up and adapting the system to suit our purpose. At Trafford the ability to carry out Financial Investigations is a key factor to our investigations process, so the FI module that INTEC built with us is a great extension to the InCase system”
Set clear targets and expected outcomes for the work of counter-fraud teams.
Management information and targets are a key part of any fraud team. INTEC’s software allows you to monitor and report on all aspects of the investigation from referral to outcome. With the added benefits of performance modules like InCase BFPI and InCase HBRF, INTEC have ensured that management Information reports are an added benefit of our software and not a labour intensive task which occupies large proportions of your time.
