Recommendation 10

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