Following on from your request for a review of the information provided to you in relation to your request, please be advised of the following:

D) For Council Tax the Council has a Prosecutions and Sanctions Policy for Council Tax Reductions. Decisions to prosecute for fraud are made under the Crown Prosecution guidelines for criminal offences. The Council will consider prosecuting in cases where it is considered that sufficient evidence exists to prove beyond reasonable doubt, that fraud has been committed. These cases will have satisfied the “Evidential” and “Public Interest” tests.

E) The information provided by the Audit Commission is identified as a mismatch, there is no assumption of fraud. The Council is obliged under Audit Commission regulations to look into all cases referred to it as a mismatch in data and see how the data can be corrected. Any person aggrieved at appearing on the list provided by the Audit Commission would need to refer their complaint direct to the Audit Commission. As there is no assumption of fraud there is no right of appeal against an assumption of fraud.

F) Rising 18’s = 431
Other mismatches = 1518

H) Due to cost and accuracy implications Basildon Council focuses on targeted canvassing using Credit Bureau information. The last full paper canvass of Single Person Discount cases was carried out in 2007.

J) No complaints were received to our knowledge as a result of NFI matching. The Audit Commission provides the mismatch list and if a resident were to complain about being named on the mismatch list they would be referred to the Audit Commission as they provided the information.

K) No information is collected directly from Basildon Council by the Audit Commission. All the results of the exercise to check the mismatched data are put directly on the Audit Commission secure website and they review the results from there.

Please let me know if you have any further queries.

Yours sincerely


Sue Marriott
Customer Service Manager - Communication


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