Agenda item

Corporate Anti-Fraud Team 2016/17 Plan and Strategy

 

The Head of Internal Audit will submit a report providing details of the Corporate Anti-Fraud Team’s Plan for 2016/17 which is supported by the Corporate Anti-Fraud Strategy.

Minutes:

The Head of Internal Audit submitted a report detailing the support provided to the Council by the Corporate Anti-Fraud Team together with an updated Corporate Anti-Fraud Team Strategy and a summary of the proposed counter fraud plan for 2016-17.

 

It was explained that the key aim of the strategy is to ensure that public funds entrusted to the Council are protected against fraud and loss based on the  three key themes of Acknowledge, Prevent and Pursue.  Recent successes  include an additional £333,256 of Council Tax income through removal of fraudulent Single Person Discounts together with identification of £136,000 of overpayments via the National Fraud initiative data matching exercise. 

 

Members were assured that the CAFT will not focus solely on citizen fraud but will also focus on corporate fraud, including value for money, invoices etc.  Staff will need to be trained to detect fraud, particularly within Berneslai Homes.  The current level of fraud is not known as the Audit Commission previously collated this information.  Benchmarking data will now be collected. 

 

RESOLVED:

 

(i)         That the CAFT plan 2016/17 and supporting strategy is agreed, acknowledging the need for the Head of Internal Audit to exercise his professional judgement during the year to apply the plan flexibly, allowing for planned proactive/detective days to be diverted to reactive investigation work as required.

 

(ii)        that the Audit Committee receive quarterly monitoring reports from the HoIA to demonstrate progress against the plan including information where the plan has materially varied from the original plan.

 

Supporting documents:

 

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