Councils are encouraged to sign up to a joint counter-fraud initiative with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) investigators after a ‘successful pilot stage’.
A letter to council leaders from local government minister Marcus Jones and DWP minister Baroness Buscombe, seen by The MJ, proposed a sector-wide rollout of the pilot.
But one local authority chief executive said: ‘They’re trying to rebuild linkages with council tax reduction scheme fraud investigation having taken away local government’s capacity to investigate fraud when fraud investigation teams were transferred to DWP.’
