Shutting down fraud
Bromsgrove District Council is to work with the Audit
Commission as part of its ongoing commitment to protect taxpayers’
money from fraudsters.
In the New Year the Audit Commission will
carry out a statutory comparison between the separate Council Tax
and Electoral databases held at Bromsgrove District Council to spot
discrepancies that signal potential fraud.
As a key step in rooting out fraudulent
activity, automated data-matching programs compare or ‘match’
personal data from separate databases across authorities to spot
inconsistencies. Any inconsistencies then lead to the second step
of investigations to establish whether they are due to fraud, error
or other reasons. Data-matching is a key weapon in the fight
against Council Tax (Single Person Discount) fraud.
Bromsgrove District Council portfolio holder
for Resources Cllr Geoff Denaro said: “Especially in the present
economic conditions it is imperative that we work to protect the
public purse. This data-matching exercise will allow the continued
good work, as we have seen in several recent examples, of
successfully prosecuting the fraudsters who are taking money away
from people who need it.”
Councils are required by law to protect public
funds. This includes sharing information with other bodies
responsible for auditing or administering public funds in order to
prevent and detect fraud. The Audit Commission is then responsible
for carrying out data-matching exercises, and also auditing
authorities’ accounts.
Bromsgrove District Council is required by the
Audit Commission to participate in the data-matching exercise and
provide particular sets of data for matching for each exercise.
These data sets are set out in the Audit Commission’s guidance,
which can be found at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nfi,
and data-matching by the Audit Commission is subject to a Code of
Practice which be found at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nfi/codeofdmp.asp.
For further information on data-matching at
Bromsgrove District Council please contact Jayne Pickering, Head of
Financial Services on j.pickering@bromsgrove.gov.uk.
