Council continues to catch benefit cheats

A new report, due to be discussed by members of the council's resources committee tomorrow, shows that last year the authority's fraud investigations team had no need to use covert surveillance and yet still closed 250 investigations, formally cautioned 13 people and successfully prosecuted two more. A total of £191,112 of benefit fraud was uncovered and £659,332 of overpaid and incorrectly claimed benefit was collected.

At the moment local authorities are allowed to use surveillance to help tackle fraud and other wrongdoing under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), but the government wants to stop councils using these powers unless it is approved by a magistrate and used for a serious crime that carries a prison sentence of six months or more. Some councils - although not Wellingborough - have previously used the powers for less serious offences such as dog fouling. 

Cllr Paul Bell, leader of Wellingborough Council and chairman of the resources committee said: "We have always used our surveillance powers sparingly - in fact last year we had no need to use surveillance at all - but we are still very successful at uncovering unlawful behaviour. Each case is looked at individually and we will always go for the least intrusive method to gather the evidence we need, such as getting information from other government agencies. Once we have enough evidence we can bring someone in for an interview under caution, which can be followed by a sanction or prosecution. Any use of surveillance is closely monitored and has to follow a rigorous process to make sure it's in the public's interest to achieve a result in this way. We only use it as a last resort when all other avenues have been exhausted.

"The government's tightening up of RIPA should help reassure the public that surveillance will be used appropriately, but we also want to let people know that this doesn't mean we won't do everything necessary to successfully investigate people that commit crimes - not only benefit fraud but also other serious crimes such as waste dumping or licensing offences. We can still use surveillance to help us tackle these issues, but as our past record shows we probably won't need to as we are very successful in using other methods to catch people."