25% discount fraud

<<Copy of Record of SPD s cancelled named LA s 16 November 2009.pdf>> <<Information Complaints Procedure V2-0.pdf>>
Dear Mr Cant

I write further to your request for information submitted to the Audit Commission on 22 October.

You requested:

An indication of what information was provided by the 11 councils used to determine the Single Person Discount Review for Council Tax fraud figure in the report Protecting the Public Purse.

The information you have requested is not held by the Audit Commission. This is because the information used to determine the Single Person Discount Review for Council Tax figure was not provided by these authorities to the Commission. Instead, the Audit Commission obtained the information by carrying out research and collecting the figures from information already in the public domain, such as published within either case studies or on websites.  Please contact me if you would like more information on these sources of information.

Once the Commission had obtained and collated this information we approached the respective Authorities to seek confirmation that it was correct.  We confirmed that they had conducted a Single Person Discount (SPD) exercise, and asked them to confirm:

• The number of SPDs awarded before the anti fraud exercises, (some of them conducted a number of campaigns hence the plural term
• The number considered high risk before the anti fraud exercise,
• The number of SPDs awarded after the exercise,
• The percentage of SPDs cancelled , and
• The financial impact of the SPDs cancelled.

Prior to publication of the Protecting the Public Purse report, each authority confirmed that the information was correct and that their ‘section 151 officer’ (the Senior Officer in charge of the authority’s financial arrangements) was content for the information to be published. The detailed information in support of the headline figures will be held by each authority and you should contact them directly if you would like to see it.

I said above that the Commission does not hold any information in relation to your request which was ‘provided’ by the authorities. However, I have attached information which is held by the Commission. These are the figures for each of the five bullet points above, produced after confirmation with the authorities, correct as at [date of report].  Please note however that as this is ongoing work within the authorities these figures may now differ.

If you are not satisfied with the response you have received you have the right to complain. I have attached a copy of the Audit Commission’s Access to Information complaints procedure.

Yours sincerely

the enclosed docs
Total Number of Discounts Cancelled as a Percentage