Council staff found almost £1.4 million worth of fraud in the past year, including council tax evasion and misuse of blue badges.
A report at the council’s finance committee on Tuesday outlined that £978,659 of the total came from cases where people wrongfully applied for or held a single occupancy council tax discount.
Council officers found the unpaid council tax and rates through a combination of data held by the council and third party sources, as well as what are called “specialist validation services”.
The report also said efforts to recover the fraud detailed in the report are underway.
A total of £106,026 came from wrongful claims for other council tax exemptions and discounts including student discounts, while £57,438 is attributed to tax reductions which were not due.
And £144,000 worth of fraud was detected from eight cases of illegal subletting of council properties.
Estimates
The council report explained that some categories of fraud are difficult to put exact values on, and so estimates have been used.
Except for housing, the largest source of fraud involved disabled blue badges, where misuse was valued at £53,470.
The council also found that £13,140 in Scottish Welfare Fund payments, meant for those on benefits who are about to enter care or who face “exceptional” living pressures, had wrongfully been disbursed.
Change in circumstances
And £3,354 had been detected by the council for situations where people on benefits failed to notify the government of a change in circumstances, which meant they were overpaid.
Besides providing the data on the value of the fraud, the report also discussed a national anti-fraud initiative that has been running since 2024.
It said nine cases of fraud had been detected from improperly claimed Small Business Bonus Scheme payments, as well as six cases of erroneous payment.
It also detailed that 420 cases of fraud had been directly reported to the council recently, with 402 being in the council’s remit.
Among the total, some 245 cases of benefit or council tax fraud had been reported, as well as 110 cases of ‘tenancy or other housing’ fraud.
Another 17 allegations were made for licensing, landlord or HMO issues, two were made for non-domestic rates, 11 were made for blue badges and parking and 13 were for miscellaneous allegations.
The report also detailed that allegations of fraud had been made against four staff members.
The papers did not detail when the 420 reports originated from, or what the outcomes were.
By Joseph Sullivan Local Democracy Reporter
