Annual Reports
Newswire - AC: A record £140m in fraud and overpayment has been detected by the Audit Commission's National Fraud Initiative (NFI) report 2006/07 - a 26% increase from £111m in 2004/05. NFI has now identified around £450m in fraud and overpayments since it started in 1996, at a cost of less than £10m.
Despite this success, however, the Commission is calling on the public sector to devote more resources to using the NFI information to track down fraud. The NFI is the country's largest public sector anti-fraud programme and it enables public bodies to share & compare information through a secure website and to identify those taking services or money that they are not entitled to.
Press release ~ National Fraud Initiative (NFI) report 2006/07 ~ Department For Work and Pensions: Progress in tackling benefit fraud ~ Targeting benefit Fraud website ~ National Fraud initiative 2004 / 05 ~ NFI web pages ~ Revised Code of Data Matching Practice ~ DWP Strategy paper - Reducing fraud in the benefit system) ~ CA Benefits website ~ NAO - Tackling Benefit Fraud ~ Review of the DWP Benefit Fraud Sanctions Regime - Social Research Report No 149 ~ CA Benefits website ~ East Riding Benefit Fraud website
Defra: Publishing his Department's Annual Report, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn reaffirmed Defra's commitment to helping people live within their environmental means and acknowledged the role of staff in some key achievements over the past year.
MoJ: The Ministry of Justice's first annual report claims better regulation has significantly reduced cold calling in person, which includes the practice of 'clipboarding' - knocking on doors and aggressively approaching people in shopping centres. Unauthorised advertising and marketing in hospitals have also been almost entirely removed.
Other successes include a strategy developed to deal with outright fraud like contrived accidents and a significant reduction of malpractice by companies handling claims made to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority, with some businesses voluntarily leaving the market.
Press release ~ Claims Management Regulation Annual Review 2007-08 ~ Claims Management Regulation: Impact of Regulation ~ Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority
ScotGov: The next 12 months will be critical in defining Scotland's approach to tackling climate change, John Swinney told the Scottish Parliament last week when he published the Government's second annual report on Scotland's Climate Change Programme.
Press release ~ Second annual report on Scotland's Climate Change Programme (April 2007 - March 2008) ~ ScotGov Climate Change
CRC: Two years ago the Government’s Affordable Rural Housing Commission (ARHC) launched its report setting out a raft of interrelated recommendations for government departments, regional assemblies, local authorities and communities and the Commission for Rural Communities been tracking the progress that's been made to implement the ARHC's recommendations.
Its new report - 'Assessment of the implementation of the Affordable Rural Housing Commission’s recommendations' - shows that although some of the essential elements have been put in place, there are still key gaps which need to be addressed.
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