Cost of National Fraud Initiative from 1996 - 2008

This information does not seem to include staffing costs, or the costs (averaging £1,500) the Audit Commission charges to each local authority for mandatory participation in the exercise.

If you read the minutes of the Audit Commission Board you will see that they have decided to oppose moves to make them comply with reasonable national standards in respect of their use of 'statistics' on the grounds that this would make their work less effective.

IE reading between the lines, their 'estimates' would have to be more reasonable and fair and their publicity material more reliable.

Therefore, any statistics from the Audit Commission cannot be taken to have been complied in accordance with reasonable standards in terms of professionality.

Audit Commission Board Minutes are available on the internet.

REF 'How to lie with statistics' etc.

Nor does include the substantial costs to local councils of investigating the extensive hit lists sent out to councils, which appear to run at around £5,000 per council, not counting complaints and appeals and private investigators and surveillance officers and so on.

There must also have been legal costs, as many councils have complained that what the Audit Commission has been doing with the electoral register is unlawful and legal opinions have been taken on both sides.

These disputes are still continuing, I believe, on the basis of what I have read in Audit Commission Board Minutes, via arguments about Audit Criteria for evaluating the performance of councils.

So if you are interested in this, I have suggested a number of lines of approach.

We need to get some sort of voluntary body organised to monitor the Audit Commission, but I am not sure how this could be done.

I would suggest that you write to each of the councils involved and ask them for their information.

quote"We need to get some sort of voluntary body organised to monitor the Audit Commission, but I am not sure how this could be done. "

i am, lets varify every report we can find on there site, then go digging around the councils systems to find the real figures.

Figures on what?

The thing is as things stand, though councils are supposed to submit up to date accurate information to the NFI by council tax law they have no need to keep 'accurate up to date information'. And in fact, since council tax bills are sent at the start of each tax year, nobody can possibly have up to date information. This is why councils have by law to deduct the amount on the basis of a statutory assumption that the same rate will apply for the rest of the year. This assumption is the legal basis for the discount.

The NFI, stupidly, in may view, pretends that entitlement is based on council 'beliefs' about the residents of a house, when it is not. In this way it argues that this is matching as defined in the law.

And councils save a lot of money by not keeping information even vaguely up to date. It is cheaper for them to wait for NFI potential fraud hit lists and investigate these than it is to comply with requirements for them to keep up to date information and they appear able to get away with this barring lengthy legal procedings which nobody can afford.

And of course councils and the NFI are allowed to 'assume' that people are criminals and the figures are based on this 'assumption'. And no, they don't have to go to criminal courts as they simply cancel the discount leaving the innocent with only civil tribunals in which to plead their case with the burden of proof effectively reversed and the presumption of innocence forgotten long ago. The whole thing abolishes that right from the start.

So which figures do we need, and what purpose would it serve? I am beginning to despair that nobody will ever hold these people to account and that nobody wants to either.

Yes these investigations often cost more than they are worth, but the money councils save on admin costs by dealing with the electorate simply on the basis that they might be thieves has to be factored in. That is probably what sways those councils which were initially reluctant to let the electoral register be misused in this way.