Fraud Prevention & Data Matching

East Hertfordshire District Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers and therefore we may share information in order to prevent and detect fraud.

The Cabinet Office conducts data matching exercises to assist in the prevention and detection of fraud. The processing of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out under its legal obligation using powers in Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 (LAAA).

The LAAA defines data matching as the comparison of sets of data to determine how far they match including the identification of patterns and trends and the purpose of this is to identify inconsistencies that may indicate fraud.  The data compared are usually personal data which is only obtained and processed in accordance with data protection legislation. Data matching is subject to a Code of Practice and a data deletion schedule. 

The Cabinet Office requires us to participate in data matching exercises and we are required to provide particular sets of data for matching for each exercise. The latest dataset specifications for the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) 2022 to 2023 national exercise and NFI council tax single person discount 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024 exercises can be found at: 

National Fraud Initiative: public-sector data specifications 

For further information on how the Cabinet Office processes your personal data please see their National Fraud Initiative Privacy Notice

 

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