The Government's pandemic fraud investigation unit lacked ‘appropriate governance’ either on the part of the Government or from Thurrock Council, an independent review has concluded.

Audit group Mazars said councillors had only ‘limited exposure’ to the work of the National Investigation Service (NIS).

It also criticised the presentation of the unit as a law enforcement authority, with a ‘.police’ email domain and press releases referring to ‘raids and ‘seizures’, according to the Times.

A spokesperson for Thurrock Council has previously said: ‘[NIS] went through all the proper processes and procedures to receive authorisation to use the police.uk domain in 2018 it has for some time used a gov.uk web address and is working with the College of Policing to move all email addresses to gov.uk and close the previous web domain.’

The NIS recovered just £17m of fraud and helped to secure just six criminal prosecutions for abuse of pandemic support schemes.

A spokesman for Thurrock Council said: 'Improved governance arrangements were already in place when the report went to Thurrock Council’s audit committee. This is acknowledged in the report’s Executive Summary which says: “Recommendations arising from the review have either already been addressed or actions are being taken to address them, to ensure that going forward the governance of NATIS is performed as part of the Council function and is robust.”

'Thurrock Council is entirely confident that robust governance arrangements are in place, and have been for some time.

'In line with good practice Thurrock Council regularly reviews and improves governance processes and, as was the case here, reports on actions are taken to the council’s Audit Committee.'