Stop Fraud

Help us tackle benefit cheats

All benefit theft is a crime and we need your help to find the people who are cheating the benefit system. Anyone who commits benefit fraud is stealing and the City of Edinburgh Council is determined to track down anyone committing benefit fraud.

Each year £900 million is lost in the UK to benefit fraud – this means around £36 a year from each household. This is equivalent nationally to 13,000 doctors or 20,000 police officers or 23,000 teachers. In 2006/2007 the Council dealt with 44,500 benefit claimants and identified over 90 fraudulent claims. Anyone who has committed benefit fraud will have to pay back the money they owe and risk a prison or community service sentence.

We are committed to providing high quality public services to you. So that we can do this, we need to protect ourselves and you from fraud and corruption.

We are doing this through:

• raising awareness of fraud and corruption and encouraging you to tell us about people you know who are cheating the system through our "Tackle Benefit Fraud and don't be a victim" campaign
• investigating fraud claims, referring these onto the Police and/or Procurator Fiscal for prosecution and recovering the claims
• monitoring and publishing our progress so that we can keep you up-to-date on how we are getting on.

What is Benefit Fraud?

Tackling Benefit Fraud

What can you do?

Anti-fraud and corruption policy