Computer blunders by Bradford Council staff helped contribute to £4 million of benefit being paid to people who were not entitled to it.

An ageing computer system has been partially blamed by council bosses for the massive over-payment.

Just a third of that £4 million has been recovered from those who incorrectly received extra housing and council tax benefits.

Council figures show that only £900,000 of the over-payment for the year ending last March was due to fraud when people were prosecuted and taken to court.

The rest was paid out because forms were incorrectly filled in, mistakes were made by council staff because they were working on misinformation, or because of the computer errors.

About £160,000 of the over-payment has been written off because it was due to official mistakes and the claimants said they were unaware they were being paid too much.

Now members of the social care and housing scrutiny committee will demand answers from the council's director of customer services, Wallace Sampson, about exactly how the costly errors occurred.

They will also want to know why only 34 per cent of the over-payments was clawed back. The council makes the payments on behalf of the Benefits Agency to 32,000 people claiming housing benefit and 47,000 receiving help with their council tax in the district.

They are dealt with by about 180 staff working in city centre Britannia House and processing £100 million of benefits a year. The funds come from central Government -- but the council keeps the amounts recovered through chasing over-payments made by mistakes or as a result of fraud.

Labour housing spokeswoman Councillor Lynne Joyce (Keighley South) said: "This involves a very large amount of public funds and must be tackled. I understand the council must use discretion and compassion when dealing with people, but we must be stringent, find out the cause of errors and make sure they do not happen again."

Committee chairman Cllr Grahame Thornton (Lib Dem, Baildon) said: "At the end of the day we have to make sure that people are getting the right amount. We need to make the claim forms as easy as we can for people to understand."

Deputy chairman Cllr Valerie Binney (Con, Thornton) said it was a matter of concern and there should be close scrutiny about how mistakes were happening.

But Mr Sampson said: "We have a power to recover over-payment but have to bear in mind that these are people on low income. There needs to be a sensible, affordable repayment system for them so that in the fullness of time the debt will be recovered."

He added: "We are using an outdated 15-year-old computer system which requires a lot of manual work. We are looking at ways of replacing it. There is also wrong information on forms which staff are working from."