Efforts to tackle fraud in York have seen a Right to Buy application stopped, properties recovered and whistleblowing by council staff probed, according to a report.
A report from Veritau, which does counter-fraud work for City of York Council, stated almost £245,000 was saved in 2024-5 following 428 referrals from the public, council staff and organisations.
The report stated fraud was found in almost half of 103 completed investigations which saw two council properties recovered, two people formally cautioned and 15 warnings given.
It added two investigations launched into concerns raised by council staff remain ongoing following four reports from whistleblowers including into code of conduct breaches, theft and poor procedures.
Savings worth £245,000 made in the last financial year come as part of the £1.8m saved due to counter-fraud efforts since 2019.
The savings were higher than the £200,000 target for the year and were up from the £206,854 saved in 2023-4.
Five warnings were issued for council tax fraud following 15 investigations in 2024-5 which saved around £67,000 the largest share of the total at 27 per cent.
Housing-related savings of about £61,000, a quarter of the total, made up the second-largest share.
They came from recovering two council properties that were not being lived in by their tenants and checking 123 Right to Buy applications, one of which was blocked.
Six investigations were conducted into adult social care fraud saving £37,000 while £11,000 was netted following probes into council tax fraud which was almost exclusively related to single-person discount claims.
The recovery of money from historic coronavirus-related fraud investigations into overpayments continued into 2024-5, netting more than £29,000.
A total of 20 investigations were made into reports of parking fraud, including three related to the misuse of residential parking (ResPark) permits, saving around £2,450.
The amount of reports from council whistleblowers was up in 2024-5 from one each for the year before and 2022-3, but down from a peak of five in 2019-20.
Six out of the 18 whistleblowing concerns reported since 2019 related to staff code of conduct, the category with the highest number of referrals.
It was followed by poor procedures and theft, with three reports each, corruption and working relationships with two each.
There was one report made alleging IT abuse and another alleging false claims made by staff or contractors.