Council watchdog calls for more data matching

In its Protecting the Public Purse 2010 report, the commission says that councils should use its National Fraud Initiative (NFI) and other data matching schemes to maintain and improve their detection of benefit fraud. It says that it has run its NFI data matching exercise, which compares data sets and identifies inconsistencies or circumstances that might suggest fraud or error, every two years since 1996. The NFI has been extended to match housing tenancy records, and since July 2009 184 councils and 92 housing associations have been sent data matches about tenancies that needed investigation. These cases are now under review. The commission says that many individual councils have started to improve fraud prevention using data matching. They include Birmingham City Council's social housing counter-fraud strategy which includes data matching and use of information from its data warehouse. Matching the council's data with Midland Heart Housing Association in May 2010 resulted in investigations into multiple tenancies and unlawful sub-letting. LB Brent used data matching to identify 1,200 people who were fraudulently claiming single persons' discount on council tax and recovered £800,000 from claimants. Alan Bryce, senior manager counter fraud at the Audit Commission, told GC News: "The report highlighted the good work by councils this year in the fight against fraud, with 119,000 detected case of fraud worth £135m. In addition, councils recovered 1,600 homes from tenancy fraud cheats with a replacement value of nearly £240m. "But this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the total amount of fraud targeted against local authorities. The report goes on to highlight examples of data matching, and the improved use of information technology more generally, as an important component in the armoury of weapons councils can deploy to both prevent and detect fraud. "It also showcases good practice examples of effective data matching by councils and encourages local authorities to maximise the benefits afforded by such technology to reduce the loss and harm caused by fraud."