Swindon Borough Council's fraud team saves taxpayer millions
They've been working to prevent fraud and identify people who should be paying more in council tax
Investigators at Swindon Borough Council have saved the taxpayer more than £3m over the last two financial years by preventing fraud, or identifying people who should be paying more in council tax.
Members of the authority’s Audit Committee heard from the head of audit Nick Hobbs who told them that last year the recovery of eight houses in 2023-24 from fraudulent tenants saved £744,000, and the stopping of seven fraudulent housing applications saved another £22,000.
Stopping 12 right-to-buy applications which were not legitimate saved £1.03million, debt recovery brought in £4,000 and the prevention of fraudulent applications for housing benefit, council tax reductions, and student exemptions saved £16,000.
The total saved was £1.83m, compared to £1.5m saved in the financial year 2022-23.
And according to Mr Hobbs, the fraud team brought even more than that. He said: ”An exercise was carried out through the National Fraud Initiative where Council Tax Single Person discount was matched to electoral roll and credit agencies.
“This identified an additional billable income of £272,723, and work on empty homes identified 219 properties to be occupied resulting in an additional £452,235 in empty homes bonus.
“The overall figure for savings and additional billable income, for 2024-25 was £2,559,525.”
Councillor Matt Lodge asked whether these figures suggested a case for recruiting one more investigator: “The money and savings would outweigh the extra costs.”
Mr Hobbs said: ”I don’t want to turn down extra resources but two years ago we did an exercise on single persons discount and brought in a lot of billable income. This year we repeated it and it’s a 10th of that.
“We hadn’t done that for some years, since before Covid, before two years ago, so maybe you get a big win, but then you’ve picked off most of them when you repeat the exercise. So it’s hard to say what we would identify in future years”
Another report by Mr Hobbs detailed work by the investigations team thus far in 2024-25 that had identified savings, or brought in billable income amounting to £328,000.
The committee members noted Mr Hobbs’ report and agreed to a vote of thanks proposed by Councillor Neil Hopkins who said: “I’d like to thank you and the team. The work is of great importance and it is bringing in great results.”