Issue - meetings

The Audit & Governance Committee is the designated body for oversight of the Council’s anti-fraud culture.

As part of its agreed workplan, an annual report on counter-fraud activity is presented to update the Committee.

[10 Minutes]

          Upon the invitation of the Chair, the Internal Audit Manager introduced the report to Committee. The report summarised the Council’s counter-fraud activity for the year.  A more detailed update on the work on tenancy fraud undertaken by Housing staff had been provided to the Committee at the February meeting. The Council’s fraud framework was currently being reviewed by SIAP and findings and recommendations for improvement would be presented for consideration by Officers and reported to a future meeting of the Committee. As noted in the report, from 2020 to 2022 a considerable amount of work, primarily within the Revenues section in addition to their main role, had been undertaken in order to prevent fraud in the distribution of over £50M of Government funds for Covid business support grants.  In 2022 and 2023, the Revenues section had again been instrumental in processing and checking almost £9M of the various energy support payments as required by Government.

Members then took part in a question and answer session where the following points were raised:

• Members thanked the Internal Audit Manager for the report, and stated that all Officers working towards the outcome of this report must be commended, as it had saved the Council a lot of money.
• It was asked whether the estimated financial savings to the Council of around £1.3M were all savings for Arun. The Internal Audit Manager explained that this was the nominal value placed on the recovery of the 10 properties. It did not mean the Council had gained this value in cash.

The report was noted.