County secures Government funding for anti-fraud team

I 

I was very pleased to hear from Lord Ahmad (centre of pic) the Government minister who came to the County Council the other day, that we were successful in securing over £300k of funding to build up a counter-fraud team. When money is tight, you want to know that it is being carefully spent and not being creamed off by fraudsters.

 As vice-chair of the Audit Committee I supported our auditors recently when they flagged concerns about how the county manages the electricity bills sent in by the energy suppliers for our streetlights. No fraud found there, but where there are weaknesses in the process, that is where there is the potential for exploitation. 

The new team will be pro-actively countering fraud, not just waiting for it to be reported. There is the opportunity to build a centre of excellence for the region, showing how this serious issue can be tackled across all areas of local government and other public services such as health.