Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 10
10
Accepted
Delayed debt recovery guidelines and lack of enforcement for local authority recovery efforts.
Conclusion
DBT explained that the government did not issue local authorities with guidelines for undertaking debt recovery until December 2020.14 In March 2021 work started on checking a sample of payments from the first set of schemes. This work took until May 2022.15 DBT told us the recovery of losses to fraud and error by local authorities ought reasonably to be completed by the end of 2025. However, the Department cannot directly enforce this time limit and DBT mentioned that some authorities may have allowed businesses “significantly longer” to return money paid irregularly.16
Government Response Summary
The government agrees and details actions underway by December 2023 to improve recovery of irregular payments, including re-contacting local authorities, streamlining processes, introducing a pilot digital tool to assess recovery viability, and fast-tracking fraud referrals for litigation.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: December 2023 2.2 The planned non-executive directors (NED) review reported to the Committee has now been undertaken by the Chair of Department for Business and Trade (the department’s) Audit and Risk Assurance Committee. The review was undertaken during the period June through early September 2023 with findings now presented to the Permanent Secretary. 2.3 The review identified opportunities to improve recovery of irregular payments overall, including fraud payments, and improve value for money, with the following work underway to implement recommendations: • all local authorities have been re-contacted to request engagement, increasing the volume and accelerating the flow of irregular payments cases; • recovery processes have been streamlined with appropriately deployed skills and new resource allocated; • a pilot digital tool has been introduced to help assess viability of recovery from grant recipient businesses, ensuring recovery effort is focused on recoverable debt; and • fast-tracking referrals of actual and suspected fraud payments for litigation is ongoing. 2.4 The department is also working with local authorities to quantify the value of irregular payments that might reasonably be expected to be recovered and the associated cost of recovery.