Agenda item

The Chief Internal Auditor to submit a report providing Members with an update on the Council’s counter fraud activity.

Rachel Ashley-Caunt, Chief Internal Auditor introduced the report, the purpose of which was to provide the Committee with an update on the Council’s counter fraud activity.

Ms Ashley-Caunt provided a brief overview of the Council’s counter fraud work over the past 6 months:

·       Preventative work - This was proactive work, undertaken to strengthen the Council’s counter fraud controls.  It included a review of policies, as approved by this Committee at the last meeting (on 28 November 2023), the completion of Fraud Awareness Training for staff, participation in Fraud Awareness Week in November 2023 (which was an opportunity to raise awareness of risks and training) and the All Staff Briefing (as part of Fraud Awareness Week).

·       Detective work - This involved identifying areas of potential fraud or corruption, looking for potential data matches, particularly through the National Fraud Initiative exercise (Internal Audit was currently working through those matches) and an additional pilot exercise last year, which was in relation to social housing fraud.

·       Compliance work – This looked at Assurance opinions and effective fraud controls.  The Council maintained its Fraud Risk Register, which provided some sources of assurance around key risks and had audit work on council tax and business rates exemptions within the Audit Plan (agenda item 4 - Internal Progress Report), giving some assurance of compliance with those controls in practice.

During discussion the following points were noted:

·       Members thanked the Chief Internal Auditor for her work.

·       In response to a question from the Chair on identifying fraud within the administration of grants from the UK SPF, the Chief Internal Auditor confirmed that there was an allocation of days for UK SPF work within this year’s Audit Plan.  This would include a wider coverage on how the programme was managed, including some assurances around administering grants and the controls in place etc.

·       The outcome of the UK SPF audit would be reported to the Committee later this year.

·       The Chair commented that there were various counter fraud measures that grant applications were subject to prior to approval.  He took the opportunity to thank the Assistant Director for Regeneration and UK SPF and his team for their work.

·       In relation to other financial assistance schemes administered by the Council, which could be abused, the Chief Internal Auditor advised that the Supporting Vulnerable People audit, as detailed in the Internal Audit Progress Report (agenda item 4) referred to some assurances given around assistance programs for those requiring additional support.  It was important to administer these schemes in a consistent manner and sufficiently evidence on how this had been undertaken.

·       In relation to a Member question on the ‘cleansing of tenancy data’ referred to at paragraph 5(f) of the report, the Chief Internal Auditor advised that this had been a new and interesting exercise, which the Council had expressed an interest in participating in.  It had involved matching tenancy records to other sources of data from other areas of the public sector and the Financial Regulation Authority to link people to properties.  This exercise could potentially identify tenants subletting properties, tenancies the Council was unaware of, deceased tenants etc.  Some of the matches identified were subject to ongoing investigation.  The exercise had enabled identification of changes in tenancies, not recorded on the Council’s system and this had resulted in having a much better source of information for future data matching exercises.

·       The Chief Internal Auditor advised that the Council had been accepted to participate in stage 2 of this data matching exercise, which potentially involved matching against sources of data including Airbnb data, which was an opportunity to see whether any properties were being let out via such platforms.

RESOLVED that the Committee NOTED the progress made in counter fraud work.