Council Tax Fraud

What is council tax fraud?

Council tax fraud costs local authorities £90m per year. Here, council tax payers unlawfully claim a discount or exemption to which they are not entitled - e.g. single person discount, student occupancy exemption. The cause may be a false declaration, or a failure to declare a change of circumstances. However, whatever the cause, many local authorities want to stop this type of fraud. Stopping council tax fraud increases revenue and protects council services during times of cuts.

How can Callcredit help?

Callcredit can help you to identify cases of council tax fraud by comparing your records with up-to-date public and private sector databases. In conjunction with our trusted partners, we can also help you to avoid the operational difficulties of running a paper-based annual review and to deliver the benefits quickly.We offer a council tax fraud health check to estimate your opportunity for improvement. Should you decide to go ahead, our flexible pricing can meet your risk, reward and budget requirements.

Electronic detection and prevention

Callcredit can help you to prevent fraudsters from falsely making claims, and help you to detect fraudsters in your wider council tax base. Unlike other services which result in excessive cases for investigation, our service utilises proprietary technologies and high quality data, ensuring that every case for investigation has a high chance of leading to a removed discount.

Feature	Benefit
Using public and private sector data	Most comprehensive and cross-checked data sources
ResidencyPLUS technology	Improved occupier lookup for disorganised individuals who do not update theirfinancial records Avoiding double counting when individuals are known by more than one name
Named individuals	Accurately naming and counting the current tenants Confirming their relationship to the council tax payer
Occupancy history	Providing earliest known date for additional occupants to maximise revenuerecovery
Compliant and secure	Processed in line with the Data Protection Act and all industry codes of conduct Using a secure and robust IT platform which conforms with all relevant ITsecurity and management standards - e.g. ISO 27001

Managed delivery

With our trusted partners, we can also offer you a managed delivery solution. Here, you avoid the operational difficulty ofrunning a manual review process. We deliver all of your operational needs, including contacting citizens, answering their questions and processing their responses.

Feature	Benefit
Cost avoidance	Avoid operational cost and complexity of sending letters, answering questionsand processing citizen response
Rapid delivery	Deliver benefits quicker by avoiding the delays incurred from recruiting staff forthis initiative
Sign off at all stages	Ensure full control, aligned to your political and process requirements