22% in Lambeth pilot have benefit claims stopped or cut

South Staffordshire wants us to be impressed that their "crackdown" on housing benefit and council tax fraud has saved taxpayers at least £117,000. But Maidenhead has identified bogus benefit claims worth more than £500,000 over the past year. And, as mentioned in previous posts, during a five month pilot of voice analysis software Lambeth Council has saved some £450,000 it was losing through benefit fraud.

That's not the most stunning number. During the pilot, almost 1,700 people were assessed, and 377 had their benefits stopped or cut.

That's 22%. Reproduce that across the social security system and we are looking at vast savings.

A round-up now of some individual cases. One in Greenock is a good example of criminal sloth in the state sector. Hugh Meechan began receiving incapacity benefit in 1999 after being signed off with a bad back. Then - in June 2005 - it was discovered that he had been working. In the cash economy, perhaps? Er, no ... as a bank nurse at Ravenscraig Hospital, employed by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. He had claimed £6,174 in benefits during this time. Evidently his case has just come to court.

Free money, help yourselves. Now the case goes from the ridiculous to the surreal.

A report into his background advised that Meechan was unfit for community service because of his back complaint.

But he asked for a review of his fitness when Sheriff Vincent Canavan revealed he would be jailed if he could not do unpaid work. Sentence was deferred for further reports.

A Shirebrook woman who falsely claimed £41,000 in benefits has been jailed. She started receiving income support, Council Tax benefits and housing benefits when she was living alone, but she then moved in with her partner but failed to notify the authorities and continued collecting benefits, despite the fact her partner was in work.

And a South Norwood woman has been found guilty of dishonestly claiming benefits on the basis of being a single parent between 2002 and 2005 when she was in fact living with her partner. This must be the hardest deception to tackle in a systematic way, and indeed the council was alerted to the £11,200 fraud by an anonymous tip-off.

A Wythenshawe woman used more than £18,000 in fraudulently claimed benefits to fund a secret crack cocaine habit. She "was given the money in child care tax credits between 2004 and 2007 for what she claimed were spiralling child care costs for her two children". The court heard she had initially been caught out in September 2006, but that she had continued to try to make false claims until she was caught out a second time. Given that she admitted offences running through to 2007, she seems to have been successful.

Finally, a 61-year-old man has been convicted of wrongfully claiming £60,000 in disability benefits between 1996 and 2000. He claimed it took him 10 minutes to walk 50 yards but at the same time he carried coffins and drove a taxi for a living as well as playing bowls in his spare time. It took them four years to stop him. Evidently his case too has just come to court.

Yesterday's post spotlighted inadequate sentencing. Today's tiny sample suggests that even small cases with guilty pleas are taking too long to reach court in the first place. The justice system creaks again.