Investigators at Swindon Borough Council have saved the taxpayer more than £3m over the last two financial years by preventing fraud, or identifying people who should be paying more council tax.

Members of the authority’s audit committee heard from the head of audit Nick Hobbs who told them that last year the recovery of eight houses in 2023-24 from fraudulent tenants saved £744,000, and the stopping of seven fraudulent housing applications saved another £22,000.

Stopping 12 right-to-buy applications which were not legitimate saved £1.03million, debt recovery brought in £4,000 and the prevention of fraudulent applications for housing benefit, council tax reductions, and student exemptions saved £16,000.

The total saved was £1.83m, compared to £1.5m saved in the financial year 2022-23.

And according to Mr Hobbs, the fraud team brought even more than that. He said: ”An exercise was carried out through the National Fraud Initiative where Council Tax Single Person discount was matched to electoral roll and credit agencies.

"This identified an additional billable income of £272,723, and work on empty homes identified 219 properties to be occupied resulting in an additional £452,235 in empty homes bonus.

“The overall figure for savings and additional billable income, for 2024-25 was £2,559,525.”

Councillor Matt Lodge asked whether these figures suggested a case for recruiting one more investigator: “The money and savings would outweigh the extra costs.”

Mr Hobbs said: ”I don’t want to turn down extra resources but two years ago we did an exercise on single persons discount and brought in a lot of billable income. This year we repeated it and it’s a 10th of that.

"We hadn’t done that for some years, since before Covid, before two years ago, so maybe you get a big win, but then you’ve picked off most of them when you repeat the exercise. So it’s hard to say what we would identify in future years”

Another report by Mr Hobbs detailed work by the investigations team thus far in 2024-25 that had identified savings, or brought in billable income amounting to £328,000.

The committee members noted Mr Hobbs' report and agreed to a vote of thanks proposed by Councillor Neil Hopkins who said: “I’d like to thank you and the team. The work is of great importance and it is bringing in great results.”

FRAUD INVESTIGATED BY THE COUNCIL

Examples of some of the work undertaken by Swindon Borough Council’s fraud investigation team, which has saved the council, or brought in, millions of pounds include identifying houses where no council tax was being paid despite occupation and uncovering illegal subletting of council houses.

Details provided to the council's  audit committee include an exercise matching death records to council tax accounts.

The report said: “This match identified a property that had been in receipt of 100 per cent council tax discount for 10 years as it was declared as going through probate. 

“The investigation found that other adults were linked to the property during the time the discount was being applied. A visit was conducted and neighbours spoken to. The occupiers were identified and a Council Tax bill was raised, backdated to April 2015 and totalling £17,741.”

In another case, housing officer found that a council home was being sublet. The original tenant was found to have been abroad for several months. When the council went to court to recover the property, a friend of the tenant said he was living there: “and had been for nearly a year and that he was paying the rent and council tax from his own money using the tenant's rent cards.”

The property was recovered and the subtenant was rehomed.