Agenda item

Report by Executive Director of Resources.

This report presents a summary of activity against the Counter Fraud Plan for 2023/24, which was previously presented to the July 2023 Audit & Governance committee meeting.

The report also presents the Counter Fraud Plan for the coming year 2024/25.

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The Counter Fraud plan supports the Council’s Anti-Fraud and Corruption Strategy by ensuring that the Council has proportionate and effective resources and controls in place to prevent and detect fraud as well as investigate those matters that do arise.

RECOMMENDATION

The Committee is RECOMMENDED to

a)                 Note the summary of activity against the Counter Fraud Plan for 

             2023/24.

b)                 Approve the Counter Fraud Plan for 2024/25.

The report was presented by the Chief Internal Auditor and the Counter Fraud Team Manager. Firstly, two corrections were highlighted in the report; paragraph 11, in the top paragraph, the 6 should read as 7 and paragraph 12; in the very top box, it should read 5 cases instead of 2 cases.

This report presented a summary of activity against the Counter Fraud Plan for 2023/24, which was previously presented to the July 2023 Audit & Governance Committee meeting. The report also presented the Counter Fraud Plan for the coming year 2024/25. The Counter Fraud plan supported the Council’s Anti-Fraud and Corruption Strategy by ensuring that the Council had proportionate and effective resources and controls in place to prevent and detect fraud as well as investigate those matters that did arise.

An update was provided to the Committee on the resources of the team. No services were now provided to District Councils, so the team had more capacity. The Team was working on a lot of reactive work, and this could be more resource intensive, and it could not be planned for. The prevention work had got better and hopefully this would be reflected in the plan for the year ahead. The use of data analytics and the work on counter fraud, an officer was now working across both areas, and this was being used to improve the audit assurance. The Senior Counter Fraud Officer had now qualified. The Team was now stable. The Chief Internal Auditor was very confident about delivering the plan for the year ahead.

Members raised the following points:

• There was some legislation that was due on the Economic Crime and Transparency Act, how was this going to affect the Council? This was a good opportunity to see where the Council is in terms of high-level controls set out in the Strategy. It was a good opportunity to review them and use them as a health check. The organisation could now be held liable for allowing fraud to have happened unless it was demonstrated that it had policies and procedures in place to counter-act it. It mirrored the Bribery Act.
• The Team had managed to get back £64000 from a company that went into liquidation, how much was that short on the amount that was lost in the first place? The officer reported that the amount received was just over half of the original claim.
• Blue badge fraud was not very costly to the Council. It is an inherent risk for the Council, that the Council takes seriously and is proactively tackling with the team which are doing well to stamp out fraud in this area.
• Further details were asked for on some of the cases in Section 10. Officers gave the detail to the Members and informed the Committee that the report was at summary level only and the detail, if required, was presented at the Audit Working Group, which all Members of the AGC could attend.
• What was the Chief Internal Auditors assessment on the level of fraud at the Council and could it be reduced with more resources? There was no material problem with fraud at the Council. There was no benchmarking across local authorities. There was the Audit Network and the Counter Fraud Network. Prevention of fraud was more important. Officers had full confidence in the counter fraud team which was going in a good direction. It was important to note that the Council were taking fraud seriously and this had been developed and strengthened over the last two years. There was cooperation with Thames Valley Police with joint investigations and dedicated officers in place. The Team had also taken Whistleblowing on board.

RESOLVED: that the Committee a) noted the summary of activity against the Counter Fraud Plan for 2023/24 and b) Approved the Counter Fraud Plan for 2024/25.