Fraud totalling £2.7m found by Stoke-on-Trent City Council

BBC News

4 hours ago

Fraud totalling about £2.7m has been uncovered by a council, with transgressions in tax, housing tenancy and right-to-buy among the offending. Officers at Stoke-on-Trent City Council found there were 108 cases of fraud committed against the authority in 2024/25, which was down on the 142 reported the previous year.They include 40 cases of residents fraudulently claiming the single person discount on council tax, 18 of housing tenancy fraud, 22 of right-to-buy fraud and another six relating to council tax.The authority's audit and standards committee was told legal action would be taken if it was in the public interest but in some cases the costs would outweigh any potential benefit.
Head of audit and fraud Clare Potts said during a committee meeting on Thursday: "We're looking at making sure we're efficient going forward, so we're focusing on areas of high risk and high value fraud."Where we do need to look at other areas of fraud, we're doing that as efficiently as we can."
'Totally unacceptable'
Among the cases highlighted was Alykhaan Nourani, from Manchester, who was prosecuted for making fraudulent pothole damage claims against the council.He was found guilty of four counts of fraud before he received an eight-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work.Ms Potts said: "It sends out a really positive message that, as an authority, we don't tolerate fraud and will use the full force of the law if you try to commit fraud against us."Committee member Ross Irving, Conservative, suggested the council should take more fraudsters to court."There's a lot of this out there. There are times when we need to send a message that this is totally unacceptable," he said.
This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.
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