MORE than £30,000 is to be recovered by council officers after fraudulent or erroneous claims for Covid business support grants and council tax support payments were made.

From checks carried out so far by the council’s anti-fraud team, cross-referencing data has revealed five payments that should not have been made from the council’s funds.

The checks by the team are ongoing and are part of routine inspections required by the Cabinet Office.

The five payments in question amounted to more than £30,000 and officers are now able to set to work recovering that money.

The aim of the regular checks is to identify possible cases of error or fraud and detect and correct any resulting under or overpayments from the public purse.

Councils have to make these checks on a regular basis, normally once every two years.

In this year’s audit and assurance report, as at January 12, a total of 456 data sets were being reviewed by officers in departments from payroll, council tax, blue disability badges and covid-19 small business grant payments.

Of the data reviewed to date, errors in payments were found in five cases, amounting to more than £30,000.

The report said these were in relation to the payment of three Covid Small Business Grants and two council tax support payments.

The report said: “The audit and assurance service continues to coordinate the council’s participation in the statutory National Fraud Initiative (NFI) exercise. The NFI is a nationwide data matching exercise, designed to help participating bodies identify possible cases of error or fraud and detect and correct any consequential under or overpayments from the public purse.

“The exercise is a mandatory requirement for local authorities, which is coordinated by the Cabinet Office. The main exercise is carried out once every two years.

“The service has coordinated the submission of data, in liaison with other services across the council. As part of the most recent major exercise, a number of datasets were submitted through 2020/21 and 2021/22. Following the release of data matches from these submissions, work has been ongoing to investigate these further.”