Your personal information and fraud prevention, detection and data matching
Your personal information may be shared internally and with other agencies such as the Cabinet Office, and may be used in data matching exercises, for the prevention and detection of fraud.
How we use your personal information
We are required by law to protect the public funds that we administer. Information provided to us may be shared with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds or where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud.
National Fraud Initiative (NFI)
The Cabinet Office appoints the auditor to audit our accounts. It is also responsible for carrying out data matching exercises.
Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information. Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it indicates that there is an inconsistency which may require further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.
The National Fraud Initiative, is the Cabinet Office’s biennial data matching exercise which is intended to detect fraudulent and erroneous payments from the public purse. The work is designed to help reduce the level of many types of fraud including housing benefit fraud, payroll and pension fraud, and housing tenancy fraud.
The Cabinet Office currently requires us to participate in this NFI data matching exercise to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. We are required to provide particular sets of data to the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise, and these are set out by the Cabinet Office. Details of this data matching can be found on Gov.uk.
Once the Cabinet Office has completed the data matching exercise, the results are shared with us, we then investigate any inconsistencies to determine whether there is or has been fraud taking place.
The use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under its powers in Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under data protection legislation.
Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a Code of Practice.
Other fraud prevention and detection work
The primary objective of the council’s Counter Fraud and Irregularity strategy is to ensure the prevention of fraud and corrupt acts and to ensure that any instances of these are investigated and dealt with effectively. As part of this strategy we conduct a programme of pro-active counter fraud reviews into transactions and records held across different business areas. They are designed specifically to identify unusual, erroneous or potentially fraudulent transactions.
We may also use information including personal information to prevent and detect fraud in any of our systems and may supply information to credit reference agencies or other external bodies for such purposes. Information held or received may also be used to verify information given for application purposes. We do not require the consent of individuals under data protection legislation to use personal information in this way.