Countering fraud
Harrow Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers. Any losses attributed to fraud have a direct impact to the authority.
The Corporate Anti-Fraud Team (CAFT) work to ensure that public money is protected and spent appropriately.
Over the last 18 months CAFT has investigated 159 fraud and corruption offences committed against Harrow Council, generating savings in excess of £1.5 million.
CAFT seek to publicise its cases through local and national media, and has featured on television and radio to promote its practices of countering fraud.
National Fraud Initiative (NFI)
The NFI is an exercise that matches electronic data within and between public and private sector bodies including:
- Police authorities
- local probation boards
- Fire and Rescue authorities
- local councils
- other private sector bodies to assist in the prevention and detection fraud.
The use of data, usually personal information for NFI purposes, continues to be controlled to ensure compliance with data protection and human rights legislation.
It involves comparing sets of data, such as the payroll or benefits records of a body, against other records held by the same or another body to see how far they match.
For more details visit 'Fair Processing Notice'. The data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified.
Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency that requires further investigation.
No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.