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Bristol City Hall(Image: Bristol Live)<\/p>\nThe number of whistleblowing cases doubledBristol City Hall(Image: Bristol Live)<\/p>\n
Bristol City Council\u2019s scam-busters stopped \u00a34million of corruption last year.<\/p>\n
The counter-fraud and investigations team unearthed a wide range of attempted cons<\/a> by a variety of people, including staff, tenants, parents and suppliers, the authority\u2019s audit committee was told.<\/p>\n Tenancy fraud work resulted in 30 \u2018positive outcomes\u2019, such as a property recovered or a false application for a tenancy cancelled, between April 1, 2024, to March 31 this year.<\/p>\n A total of \u00a3164,000 was recovered in unpaid council tax relating to properties that had been considered empty for more than six months but were in fact occupied.<\/p>\n Weekly payments totalling \u00a33,844 were prevented from being lost to fraudsters, a report to the committee<\/a> said.<\/p>\n A Bristol City Council<\/a> employee in the finance team who had an undeclared second job was dismissed and had part of their salary paid back to the authority, while a member of staff in adult social care accused of having two full-time jobs simultaneously resigned, although there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal offence.<\/p>\n The report said: \u201cWork was undertaken on school admissions at the end of 2024 to ensure that applicants were not falsifying their address to gain access to oversubscribed schools.<\/p>\n \u201cThis resulted in cancellation of one secondary school application, with a further one currently under investigation.<\/p>\n \u201cOur fraud hub allows us to match our data to national datasets to enable early cancellation of services due to the death of users or a change in circumstances.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hub has been particularly beneficial in ensuring early cancellation of blue badges and travel passes and so avoiding their possible misuse.<\/p>\n \u201cAction can also be taken quickly to recover council properties or determine whether a succession is appropriate.\u201d<\/p>\n It said the team cancelled 243 blue badges and 1,514 concessionary travel passes over the year.<\/p>\n The report to the committee on Thursday, May 29, said: \u201cThere have been twice the number of whistleblowing cases this year in comparison with last year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not known whether this is due to an increase in awareness and confidence in the process or an indicator of increasing challenges within the organisation.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will continue to monitor the position.\u201d<\/p>\n Try BristolLive Premium for FREE without intrusive ads and brilliant new features<\/p>\n No intrusive adverts, pop-ups or distractions! Just our brilliant content presented in the best way possible.<\/p>\n Get your free one-month trial by visiting the ‘Premium’ tab on the BristolLive app now (auto renews annually at \u00a319.99).<\/p>\n If you haven’t got it already, get started by downloading our app here on iPhone<\/a> or here on Android<\/a>. If you already have the app but can’t see the ‘Premium’ section, you’ll need to check for the latest update. More info here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The number of whistleblowing cases doubledBristol City Hall(Image: Bristol Live) Bristol City Council\u2019s scam-busters stopped \u00a34million of corruption…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,3893,748,188,3374,393,4884,285,16,15,961],"class_list":{"0":"post-164044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-city-council","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-employment","13":"tag-england","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-your-money"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114638723722019166","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}