£200,000 is clawed back as city acts on council tax fraud

A FRAUD crackdown to identify people wrongly claiming a 25% single person's discount for their council tax has recovered nearly £200,000 in Derby.

The city council's internal audit team compared those households claiming the discount because they said they lived alone against the electoral register.

In cases where there was more than one person registered at the address an inspection team visited the home to check details and then update records.

The work resulted in 717 household accounts being changed and £157,099.58 being clawed back during the last financial year.

A second report also noted records which stated there were people under 18 in the household to see if they were now over 18. That resulted in 214 people's accounts being updated and £41,237.23 being claimed back because there was more than one adult at the premises.

The council has also updated its tax system so updates can be made more quickly.

The work was reported to the council's audit and accounts committee.

Councillor Matthew Holmes, a member of the committee, said he was pleased with the work.

He said: "My view is this highlights the need for the city council to make every effort to ensure that deliberate attempts to unfairly claim single person discount are identified and that genuine errors or mistakes are also corrected.

"I strongly believe the vast majority of city residents who pay their council tax in full each year should not have to subsidise those who choose to claim discounts they are not entitled to nor subsidise mistakes within the system."

But Mr Holmes said the council should also be working to recover as much non-paid council tax as possible.

Don McLure, corporate director of resources, told the committee the council's 98.4% collection rate for council tax was good.

He said: "The majority of the money we don't collect is because people abscond but we have a rigorous process to try to collect council tax."

But Mr Holmes said it still meant more than £1m was not collected.

He said: "The council needs to increase its efforts and review ways to reduce the £1.05m in council tax in 2008-09 that was not collected and 'written off'.

"It is not acceptable that a large majority of city residents have to pay an ever-increasing amount while others have no intention of contributing.

"In my view, tough action should be taken on those who genuinely can pay, but choose not to."