Blue badge fraud
Council fraud investigators found that almost a third of cases flagged up in relation to the Blue Badge scheme were fraudulent or a result of system errors.
South Ayrshire Council’s Corporate Fraud Team (CFT) looks into a range of fraud relating to council tax, business rates, welfare fund, tenancies, staff fraud and procurement. It also added specific category for covid related fraud in 2020.
The council were alerted to around 4140 matches which were whittled down to 679 ‘high level’ matches which were then investigated.
Misuse of the Blue Badge scheme, which allows people with disabilities to park on street where others cannot, had by far the highest rate of fraud/errors. Of the 190 cases which were investigated, 68 were deemed to be fraud/ errors , around a third of those the CFT looked into.
The value of these came to just over £39,000.
The report stated: “£575 is allocated to each Blue Badge error as an estimate of the future saving as a result of cancelling a blue badge, this may not be a true representation of future saving to South Ayrshire Council.”
Other categories included council tax reductions (117 investigations with four errors), business rates (36 investigations four errors), housing (300 investigations with one error) and payroll (36 investigations no errors).
A total of £30,250 was identified as money which would have been ‘lost to the public purse’ had it not been flagged up between October 2021 and March 2022.
This brought the total up to £133,000 for the year 2021/22.
The CFT dealt with 55 investigations over that period, 45 of which were closed and 10 that remained ongoing. Investigations led to an employee being reported to the police over a cash incident, one case of tenancy fraud reported to the Procurator Fiscal and two Blue Badge cases being referred to the DWP.
Two instances of potential covid business grant fraud were also reported to the fiscal.
The report said Blue Badge investigations arise where an allegation has been received about misuse.