County Council recovers more than £1m from wrongly issued blue badges and bus passes

Lincolnshire County Council says it has saved than £1 million by cancelling blue badges and bus passes which were wrongly issued.

The county council said it has saved a total of £1,009,550 – made up of £889,280.00 from blue badge passes which were wrongly issued and £120,270 from concessionary bus passes which were cancelled.

It said that 1,120 live blue badge matches were closed and 3,165 live bus passes were cancelled. The total savings are calculated based on the likely average use of the badges and passes.

At an audit committee meeting at Lincolnshire County Council on September 22, councillors received an update on the counter fraud team’s progress in protecting public funds so far this financial year.

Coun Philip Roberts (Reform UK), who represents the Horncastle and the Keals ward, questioned why so many passes had been wrongly issued.

He said: “I may have misread it but it does look like we’ve issued loads of passes that were illegal or weren’t right because somewhere it says we’ve saved about £1 million by finding the fraud.

“Can you explain first of all if that is the case and secondly how was this allowed to happen?”

Mark Harrison, audit manager at the counter fraud team at the county council, said the figures were not necessarily because people had committed fraud.

He said: “These are figures that are compiled from the NFI in relation to the monies that are identified.

“This is a central government figure, albeit we don’t see it. It’s what they calculate the savings would be.

“Somebody may have passed away and they may have not returned their pass on time. They may have moved away from Lincolnshire.

“It’s not necessarily that somebody has obtained it falsely and committed fraud.

“It’s the fact that we haven’t had the controls in place to identify when a blue badge is no longer in use and it has been sent back to us for whatever the reason may be.”

Blue badges allow people with reduced mobility to park closer to their destinations, while bus passes allow free travel on public transport.

Coun Ian Carrington (Conservative), who represents the Potterhanworth and Coleby ward, questioned why the county council hadn’t put measures in place to avoid wrongly issuing these passes.

The counter fraud team said it is required by the government to provide data on its payroll and pensions systems, its trade creditors and transport passes every two years as part of the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative (NFI).

The NFI has produced 26 reviews of the county council’s services so far this financial year, according to the counter fraud team.

A total of 22 of these reviews have been cleared between April and August – with four reviews still pending, subject to responses from other authorities.