National Fraud Initiative

The government has called on councils and other public sector bodies to join the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI) after a review found it had saved almost £200m in two years.

According to a report released today, the NFI identified and prevented fraud, overpayments and errors amounting to £198m in England from April 2014 to March 2016. Pension fraud and overpayments was the top saving for the taxpayer at £85m, followed by welfare benefit fraud and overpayments at £39m, and then council tax single person discount payments at £37m.

According to the report, combined losses from fraud and error in central and local government spending amount to between £20bn and £49bn annually. Since it began in 1996, the NFI has identified fraud and overpayments in excess of £1.39bn.

Other achievements from the scheme were to recover 54 properties for social housing and remove 726 false applications from housing waiting lists. Also, 23,063 blue badges for disabled parking were cancelled, along with 97,064 concessionary travel passes.

For more information follow the link below.

• National Fraud Initiative Report: November 2016