Benefit Fraud
It is vital for all eligible customers' who are entitled to claim housing benefit and council tax benefit make a claim. The priority of the Council's Benefits Service is to provide customers' with the advice, support and guidance needed to help simplify the claim process. The benefits service aims to pay benefit on all successful claims as soon as possible to help reduce rent and council tax charges.
However not all claims received by the Council are from people who are entitled to receive benefit. Benefit fraud costs the UK taxpayer around £1.5 billion per year. The Council is committed to preventing, identifying and stopping the payment of benefit where it is not due and to recover any overpayments on such claims. The Council's Benefits Investigation Team is dedicated to investigating allegations of benefit fraud and it has a successful track record. If proven a legal sanction is applied or cases are referred to the Procurator Fiscal for prosecution.
You can see the results of their investigations for the last few years and also the results of the joint investigations carried out with the Department of Work and Pensions.
We also operate within the Council's Fraud and Prosecution policy which details the legal sanctions available together with information about the work that is being carried out by the Benefits Investigation Team.
Although the main focus of the Benefits Investigation Team is housing benefit and council tax benefit the team works in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions. Together they investigate allegation of fraud for other welfare benefits including Income Support and Jobseekers Allowance.
The work and success of the council's Benefits Investigation Team has been recognised by the Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation (IRRV) and the team has been shortlisted for the UK Anti-Fraud Team of the Year 2010.
The team relies on receiving quality referrals from the general public and if you wish to report a suspected fraud please complete a referral form .
For further information on how the Government is targeting benefit fraud visit the targeting benefit thieves website.