Government saves £300m in two years by preventing fraud and error

The government’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI) has saved over £300 million in taxpayers’ money over the last two years – the equivalent of the annual salary for 7,843 full time teachers – by detecting and preventing fraud and error in the public sector, Minister for the Constitution Chloe Smith has announced today (Friday 31 August 2018).

The government and the organisations that take part have been able to detect or prevent fraud and error worth hundreds of millions, ensuring that money is spent where it should be, including in areas such as:

• £144.8 million in occupational pension fraud and overpayments

• £32.6 million in fraudulent or wrongly received council tax single-person discount

• £24.9 million of housing benefit fraud and overpayment

• £25.5 million in social housing waiting-list misrepresentation

• £18 million of blue badge misuse – 31,223 blue badges were revoked or withdrawn

• £5.5 million from tenancy fraud

Public bodies spend billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money delivering essential services. Often delivered through complex and wide-reaching systems, these can be seen as targets for fraudsters, undermining our fairer society by robbing those with a genuine entitlement to these services.