Does anyone know if LA's get additional subsidy for identifying cases of HB fraud? If not, do they get any incentives for identifying fraud (apart from higher OVP recovery and (so called) adpen charges?

If they do get incentives, how does this sit with Human rights and fair justice and so on?

The reason for asking is that I percieve an upward trend in IUC's and people being offered adpens and cautions as an alternative to prosecution. But when I look at a case, it's often difficult to see the LA can have arrived at a conclusion that the case merits prosecution. Those that do merit prosecution, tend not to arrive at our doorstep.

Thanks for any comments,

Tony

There is not currently any financial reward for finding HB Fraud.
The scheme that was in existance (known as WIBs or SAFE) ended in April 2006.

From April there will be a performance measure (not a financial reward) based upon reducing entitlement to HB, but this is not specifically linked to fraud.

Yep, as stated, all 'rewards' were removed - the only incentive we get are tick boxes in our Best Value stats - 4 cover fraud - How many investigators, How many cases closed in a month, How many sanctions in a month and how many notified visits were carried out.

...errr. Not quite.

Page 449 of Zebedee and Ward lists the current HB subsidy arrangements. LA error overpayments above 0.54% of the total correct payments attract nil subsidy. Whereas there's a 40% subsidy rate on fraud and claimant error overpayments.

So, in some cases, there will be a financial incentive to class overpayments as caused by fraud or claimant error rather than LA error - and yes we do come across cases where the overpayment is LA error rather than alleged fraud.

If a LA has performance related pay for its staff, one should also ask what the PRP targets are for particular fraud staff.