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East Northants residents can't repay benefits
A council which is owed nearly £600,000 in overpaid benefits says people are struggling to pay back the cash because of the current economic climate.
East Northamptonshire Council was owed 581,825 by the end of March this year through benefits overpaid in error or through fraud – compared with 461,663 the previous year.
In a committee report on countering benefit fraud being considered by the council on Tuesday, senior benefit officer, Jacqui Pell cited the current economy situation as the reason for the increase.
She said the downturn is affecting the benefit team's ability to recover overpaid benefit because people have other debts to pay.
However, they successfully identified more than 100,000 in recoverable overpaid benefit last year, compared to the previous year.
A spokesman for East Northamptonshire Council said: "It is a concern that people increasingly have priority debts such as mortgage or rent that come before repayment of overpaid housing benefit, so in the current climate we are seeing a reduction in the overall amount of overpayment recovered.
"We put the increase in identified overpayments down to improved detection of overpaid benefit, which has improved this year.
"We believe that our detection and collection rates are very good and compare well with other similar councils."
The council's aim is to recover as much of the outstanding money as possible, but as of March 31 this year, 2,967 had to be written off.
However, a number of benefit cases have been dealt with, with positive outcomes.
There were 521 referrals where there was suspected fraud, and 323 cases were completed following investigation.
There was one successful prosecution, three prosecutions are pending and 15 cautions have been given.
The fraud hotline received 93 calls up to March 31, of which 27 led to investigations.
East Northamptonshire Council is working hard to reduce benefit fraud and collect the outstanding money.
A new member of staff is training to run this area of work and new television adverts will soon be appearing on regional television to help beat the benefit fraudsters.
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Thursday 23 February 2012
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