We are required, under section 6 of the Audit Commission Act 1998, to participate in the National Fraud Initiative - NFI - data matching exercise. Data will be provided to the Audit Commission for the NFI on the 6th October and will be used for cross-system and cross-authority comparison for the prevention and detection of fraud.
Which data will be looked at?
The range of data being matched has expanded this year to include:
Current and former tenants
Housing benefits
Council tax
Private supported care home residents
Transport passes and permits
Insurance claimants
Licences
We advise residents that the data held by the authority in respect of the above will be used for cross-system and cross-authority comparison for the prevention and detection of fraud.
Data will only be transferred by secure electronic transfer using 128 bit encryption so there is no risk of data being lost in the post. Only data that indicates an abnormality will be investigated. The previous exercise in 2006/2007 detected fraud and overpayments of £140m nationally.
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