Highland Council Audit Committee To Discuss Fraud and Whistleblowing

5th June 2024

On 13 June 2024 the Audit committee of highland council will give councillors a chance to examine Frauds and Whistle blowing in the ear ended 31 March 2024. The report lists the numbers of frauds and actions taken including reporting to the Procurator Fiscal for consideration of criminal proceeding in court.

From the report
During the year, the activities involved work on a total of 26 cases and these are summarised below. This consisted of active cases subject to investigation and concluded cases with ongoing recovery or further actions by the Procurator Fiscal.

Fraud cases:
8 - allegations of tenancy fraud
1 - misuse of blue badge
3 - National Fraud Initiative (NFI) matches investigations (closed at the end of April).

Theft cases:
12 - overpayment of Payroll
1 - employee theft of school meals income
1 - fuel from a HC Depot.
6 of the above fraud and theft cases had been reported to the Procurator Fiscal.

A separate Internal Audit report on the Review of the Payroll Control Environment is provided elsewhere on the Committee agenda. Where overpayments have arisen due to the late notification of a leaver and the former employee fails to engage with the Payroll Team to agree repayment of the sum involved, these are referred to the Corporate Fraud Team for investigation. Of the 12 cases referred to above, the overpayment totals £200,228. Due to the intervention of the Corporate Fraud Team £73,042 has been recovered so far. This includes 2 cases where the overpaid amount was repaid in full and others where repayment plans are in place and being adhered to. For 1 case the overpaid sum of £25,857 cannot be recovered as the individual has been sequestrated. We have also assisted the Payroll Team in a further 2 overpayments from payroll where the persons concerned were not engaging or disputed the overpayment. Following meetings with both parties, repayment of the outstanding amounts is now underway.

Department of Work and Pensions
The DWP issues Local Authority Information Exchange Forms to the Corporate Fraud Team to request evidence for their enquiries and investigations. The DWP Criminal Investigation Team pursue allegations of serious benefit fraud potentially resulting in prosecution. The DWP Compliance Team review instances of failure to declare changes of circumstances resulting in potential overpayments of benefit. Without provision of appropriate evidence DWP is unable to progress their cases. During the year, the Corporate Fraud Team have collated information and responded to 108 Local Authority Information Exchange Forms.

Police Scotland
Police Scotland's Local Divisional Intelligence Unit, requests information on a daily basis from the Corporate Fraud Team. This process negates any duplication of work and ensures the information and intelligence gathered is for a policing purpose and is retained in line with the Management of Police Information procedure.

The number of examples of where the Corporate Fraud Team have been pivotal to police work cannot be easily summarised or listed. However, Police Scotland have stated that significant contributions in recent months have included, investigating rape and serious sexual offences, high risk missing persons (August 2023) detecting serious organised crime groups (September 2023), disrupting street level drug dealing for community wellbeing (Octo2023) and assisting with violent crime, including homicide (November 2023).

Read the full report HERE
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