More than £7m worth of fraud and payment errors have been identified in Wales in a counter-fraud initiative, according to Audit Wales.
The biennial UK-wide National Fraud Initiative (NFI) identified £7.1m of fraud or payment error across 49 organisations.
This represents a £0.6m increase on the NFI findings in 2020-21 – a rise caused by a jump in fraudulent or erroneous claims for housing benefit and council tax single person discount.
Most (97%) of the £7.1m of fraud and errors identified are from local authority data matches relating to council tax, housing benefit, blue badges, housing waiting lists, and pensions.
