Fraud – Make no mistake fraud is a crime and it takes place all too frequently. Recently I received an allegation and a very fulsome account at that. The Allegation was that a Wolverhampton City Employee is allegedly fraudulently ripping city council off. I have passed on that allegation to the City Councils Managing Director. Who informs me that the City Council will take action. The Internal Audit team are now following this matter up.
Here in Wolverhampton the City Council has a team of audit officials that police city council service areas. The Internal audit team have had their work evaluated in an Audit Committee paper that will go to a City Council Committee on Monday.
In that report it will inform City Councillors that its team of enforcers,(Wolverhampton) detected 1726 cases of fraud during the period 2013/2014. The value of that detected fraud was £1,164,525
Comparing this statistic with other Metropolitan District Councils the others have an average of 539 cases with a value of £853.072. I think this statistic shows how effective the Wolverhampton team is in fighting this crime.
Housing Benefit cases and Council Tax Benefit for 2013 2014. This was a much lower figure with Wolverhampton detecting 177 cases of this type of fraud with the value detected at just over half a million pounds ( £586,180).
Set against an average of similar local authorities of 245 cases with fraud valued at £ 725,000.
Right to Buy – Wolverhampton audit officials detected 3 cases of this type of fraud, and I will be asking a question on this at Audit Committee meeting.
I suppose the other key fraud issue that has caught my eye in the report is the fact that Disabled Parking ( Blue Badge) fraud for 2013/2014 in Wolverhampton stood at Nil!
Other Frauds reported – Procurement – Wolverhampton detected 1 case with a value of £10,160
Insurance – No cases detected
Social Care – No cases detected
Internal – Wolverhampton detected 9 cases of this type of fraud. The value of detected fraud was £36,897
Finally I will report back to you on any interesting actions arising from this report. Overall the City has a real good team of internal audit examiners.
