See previosu question, Asked the Adelphi for their opinion
Dave Wolfe, provides an answer…
As you will be aware prior to April 2006, LAs could claim SAFE additional subsidy payments for sanctions and prosecutions. The funding available for sanctions and prosecutions was not intended to directly reimburse LA costs for such investigations. Rather, it was paid in recognition for the work done by the LA in securing a caution, administrative penalty or prosecution. The SAFE scheme was designed to encourage LAs to identify incorrectness in benefit claims, putting those claims right and administering sanctions and prosecutions. The key drive was to reduce the amount of fraud and error in the system and not simply drive up the numbers of sanctions and prosecutions.
The additional subsidy payments were limited to one per HB/CTB claim (see HB/CTB Security manual 2005, Part C 5.173) because there was only one saving and overpayment to be recorded. However, Para 5.174 allowed a separate SAFE payment to be claimed if a landlord conspired with the customer.
From April 2006, when the SAFE scheme was subsumed into the administration subsidy (see HB/CTB S4/2005 Revised) LA performance will be assessed through the performance standards. As explained in HB/CTB G8/2006 the Mis-guidance initially stated that only sanctions and prosecutions against claimants should be counted but following consultation with the Fraud operations Group (FOG) it was agreed that action against landlords and colluding employers should also be included to maintain a similar counting regime to that under the SAFE scheme.
However the principle that only one case should be counted if there was only one HB claim was maintained. Therefore in the case you raise only one sanction should be recorded
Dave Wolfe
Local Authority Performance Division
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