Benefit fraud costs each York family over £80 every year. It's criminal and we prosecute.

If you suspect benefit fraud contact us straight away (contact details are available on the right hand side of this page). Please give as much information as you can. All information given is kept confidential.

We want to maximise entitlement to housing and council tax benefit whilst minimising abuse of the system. We are pro-active in preventing, detecting and investigating suspected fraud. We do this by making our systems and procedures as secure as possible and by having a dedicated fraud investigation team.

This means we have to ask a lot of questions on our claim forms and must see proofs to support claims. We also periodically review claims and undertake data matching.

Staff refer all suspected cases of fraud and abuse to our fraud investigation team. We encourage residents to do this as well and have a confidential fraud hotline listed on the right hand side of this page. 

We use the powers available to us to take appropriate action against people found to have committed fraud. As well as the recovery of any overpayment, we also make use of formal cautions and fines, whilst in more serious cases we will prosecute the individuals concerned.