Privacy Notice for the National Fraud Initiative

Our claim forms for Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and education benefits explain that the details our customers tell us are confidential and are used for working out and paying your benefits and for getting back any money you owe to the council. Your information is covered by the Data Protection Act, which gives you the legal right to put right any information about you which we get wrong. The Act also means we must not give out details about your claim except when we need to do so to sort out your claim.

However, the law also says that

• we (the council) must protect the public funds we handle; and
• we may share information that is given to us with other organisations that inspect or handle public funds, to prevent and detect fraud. Examples are the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue & Customs and the Audit Commission.

The Audit Commission appoints an auditor who checks the council's accounts. The Audit Commission is also responsible for carrying out data matching exercises. Data matching is comparing computer records held by one organisation with other computer records held by the same organisation or a different one. This is usually personal information.

Computerised data matching allows us to identify claims and payments that may be fraudulent. A match means that there is an inconsistency between the two sets of records that needs investigating. The inconsistency may be because of fraud, error or another explanation. We cannot decide which until we investigate.

The council's Fraud Investigation Group investigates inconsistencies discovered by data matching as well as allegations of fraud from other sources.

The council has to give information to the Audit Commission for data matching exercises. You can find out more about the kinds of data the Audit Commission require in their guidance at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nfi.

The law says that the Audit Commission has legal powers to use data in data matching exercises and that it does not have to get the agreement of the people whose details are being matched.

There is a code of practice for data matching by the Audit Commission at www.audit-commission.gov.uk/nfi.

Other ways we may use your details

As well as sharing details with the Audit Commission and other organisations that inspect or handle public funds, we may also use our customers' details within the council for

• keeping the electoral roll right;
• licensing private rented properties;
• checking school attendance; 
• collecting debts owed to the council (for example council rents and Council Tax); and
• preventing and detecting fraud and other crime.