Council and councillors

Report No. 129/2018 was received from the Director for Resources, the purpose of which was to provide an overview of any fraud related activity which has affected the Council during 2017/18; provide assurance regarding the Council’s resilience against the risk of fraud; and present an updated Fraud Strategy for comment prior to submission to Council.

 During discussion the following points were noted:

1. Benefit related fraud does occur in Rutland.  Claimants do sometimes fail to update the Council when there is a change in circumstances and therefore continue to receive benefit for which they were no longer entitled.  This was not always classed as fraud as there were circumstances where this could be attributable to genuine oversight, rather than an intention to claim benefits fraudulently.  Nationally there was a 25% recovery rate for benefit overpayment  and Rutland’s recovery figures were consistent  with this national average;
2. The Council approach to Blue Badge misuse was to rely on spot checks, referrals from members of the public and data matching.  This would be monitored and should the occurrence of misuse of blue badges increase, the approach and processes for dealing with this type of fraud would be reviewed;
3. The log of IT Assets was out of date, however further investigation highlighted that devices had been assigned to different users but records had not been updated.  Most of the devices were now accounted for; and
4. Rutland County Council maintains a Fraud Risk Register to ensure that areas where the Council may be vulnerable to fraud are monitored closely.

RESOLVED

1)     The Committee ENDORSED the content of the Annual Fraud Report; and

2)     The Committee REVIEWED the draft Fraud Strategy (Appendix A of Report No. 129/2018), no amendments were advised.