Terms & Conditions

[Dawnie]

Hi

At the moment my Investigations team only deals with Fraud referrals and investigations ( also do HBMS and NFI).

I am aware in some authorities that the Fraud team is part of a bigger team within the wider benefits service and that the team has wider responsibilities that just fraud – for example one authority has it’s fraud team in a Service Support team along with Debt recovery and operational support ( whatever that might be?)

Do any of you have a different set up to the standard stand alone fraud team?

My thinking behind this question is that I have a Fraud Manager and 3 officers and to be quite honest I’m not sure if it is over resourced or that the managers post needs more tasks attached to it to add value. Otherwise I can see some of these posts being seen as ripe for an ‘efficiency saving’

Thanks

dawn

[Anonymous]

How big’s your Authority? I have a fraud manager and 2 officers plus 3 VOs/compliance officers (not all F/T). The section was staffed up in the days when we had VF targets and SAFE rewards. We have a case load of about 7,000. It does get difficult to justify to the Director in an era of cuts but just because there are no incentives any more doesn’t mean there is less fraud. After all the Council doesn’t get incentives for employing assessors either. I have got my team to diversify – they are about to start a Single Occupancy Discount drive so that should keep them busy for a while!

[Dawnie]

The team is 1 fraud manager, 3 Fraud Officers, 1 clerical support P/T – visiting officers are on another team

caseload is 5200

[Chris Cook]

We were moved from benefits to audit about 18 months ago following a reorganisation 😕
I have 2 investigators and myself as their manager, I am under the Audit Manager. No admin support.Our caseload is 5600.
Part of my new role is to be lead investigator together with the Audit Manager on any internal investigations and also there was a plan to start training me up as an Auditor, although this has not really happened yet.
Benefit Fraud is in limbo as no one seems able to decide what to do, whether the emphasis should change (error not fraud currently).

A corporate enforcement team has been highlighted as a consideration following on from BPR exercises undertaken on other enforcement parts of the Council. No consultation/discussion has taken place regarding this as of yet.

We still assist benefits and council tax with help on outside visits (benefits visiting team virtually disappeared alongside council tax void inspector) when we have a slack moment.

There is also a possibility that we may pick up more work from NFI in future (alongside benefits stuff) but nothing decided.

Chris Cook
Senior Audit & Fraud Investigation Officer

[Anonymous]

Just an observation but if you are looking to make efficiency savings through fraud posts you need to think about the impact this will have on your subsidy (40% for fraudulent overpayments). If your investigation team are proactive as well as recative and you can identify more fraud overpayments as a result, you surely have the potential to raise more revenue don’t you?

[Author]

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