A total of £447,300 worth of fraud in North Lanarkshire has been identified as a result of a national detection exercise involving North Lanarkshire Council.

The council took part in the National Fraud Initiative (NFI), led by Audit Scotland, which compared information across Scotland about benefit applicants, public sector employees and pensioners, and students with records held by the Scottish Public Pensions Agency, the Student Awards Agency for Scotland and other government agencies.

By looking for inconsistencies between information supplied to different agencies, any errors or fraudulent claims can be found and checked. The initiative targets housing and council tax benefits, and occupational pensions.

Nationally, this exercise found around £6 million of fraud and error that councils can try to recover and around £9 million that can be saved by preventing ongoing and future payments. As well as fraud, the exercise also identified overpayments made in error or through honest misunderstandings.

Councillor John Pentland, Convener of the Policy and Resources (Finance) Sub-Committee, said:

"The National Fraud Initiative has enabled all Scottish councils to take a co-ordinated approach to tackling the problem of fraud and errors in the benefit system. The majority of people who apply for benefits do so honestly, but a small minority of people attempt to obtain more money than they are entitled to. This is fraud and it means there is less money for public bodies, like councils, to invest in important local services. We take this issue very seriously and we will take legal action against where we have evidence of anyone trying to defraud the system.

"In North Lanarkshire, we have identified £447,300 of benefit fraud and we are taking action to recover that money. We will also further strengthen systems in place to ensure this type of fraud does not happen in future."

Following two pilot exercises, this is the first time the National Fraud Initiative has been run. It will now be organised every two years, and the scope of the initiative will be expanded to cover other areas of fraud.