Greenwich is leading the way in fraud prevention.
Our innovative anti-fraud partnership with the police has proved to be so successful that it is being rolled out across London.
Since April 2003 a police officer has been based at the Council and so far has helped to uncover over £1.5million of fraud including:
- council tax and housing benefit fraud
- student loan fraud
- fraudulent council tenancies.
There have been 69 arrests and 15 council properties have been recovered from fraudulent tenants.
Scheme roll-out
Following the success of the scheme, the Metropolitan Police has offered all London boroughs the chance to carry out a similar scheme.
Now eight London boroughs, including Lambeth and Lewisham, have agreed to follow the Greenwich model and bring in a police officer to work side-by-side with council officers.
Each council will pay half of the £100,000 annual cost of the partnership, but if they follow Greenwich’s success then it will be good value for money. In the first year alone, the police officer helped uncover over £500,000 of fraud.
Awards
Greenwich has won national awards for its anti-fraud work, including an award for innovation from the National Forum for Risk Management in the Public Sector. We have now been given the contract for anti-fraud work in Bromley as well.
Fraud is taken seriously
Leader of Greenwich Council Chris Roberts said: "I am pleased that eight boroughs across London will soon be able to benefit from the excellent anti-fraud working that has been happening in Greenwich over the last couple of years.
"We take fraud extremely seriously in the borough because people who fraudulently claim benefits are taking money that could be used for frontline services.
"You only have to look at our results to see that having a police officer operating within the council has worked really well for us, and I am sure it will work just as well for the other authorities that are now getting on board."
1 February 2006