Kent County Council counter-fraud manager James Flannery stresses ‘irregularities’ have always occurred (Picture: Getty Images)
A local council has come under fire for paying a care provider to look after someone who had already died.
Kent County Council is currently under great scrutiny after it emerged the authority’s losses had sky-rocketed to £2.8 million between 2023 and 2024 due to fraud and human error.
It’s understood the provider, who has not been identified, recieved payments totalling nearly £63,000 for services to the deceased person.
Reports by the council’s counter-fraud team also indicate more than £16,000 was paid out in salaries to workers who had already left the council during the last financial year.
The recent losses, discussed on Thursday during a government and audit committee meeting at the council, paled by contrast to the £517,000 lost between 2022 and 2023.
Councillor Ros Binks said: ‘I don’t quite understand how we can be paying people who aren’t on the payroll or paying an invoice without checking it.
‘[I also don’t understand] how we can have care being delivered and not know they are under-delivering.’
The authority’s reported losses represent a five-fold increase on the previous year (Picture: Getty Images)
At the meeting, the authority’s counter-fraud manager, James Flannery, said the high level of losses compared to the previous year were due to ‘better awareness’ of reporting irregularities by local officials.
Pressed on whether staff had been doing their job correctly, he stressed ‘irregularities’ had always occurred.
He said: ‘It’s just that they haven’t necessarily always been reported to the internal audit.’
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Flannery went on to say that ‘significant work’ had been carried out by his team to raise awareness of reporting norms among staff.
They have also reportedly worked closely with management to ‘mitigate the risk of irregularities happening again.’
Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of council’s local government information unit, told the BBC: ‘County councils are large and very complex organisations handling a vast number of transactions each year and they handle services across a huge spectrum.’
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