OVER £1 million worth of Covid 19 grants were claimed fraudulently in the Bradford District – a new report has revealed.

And almost half of that cash is still to be recovered.

Bradford Council’s Corporate Investigations Unit investigates allegations of fraud, theft or corruption perpetrated against the Council.

During a normal year’s work the bulk of the investigations look at crimes such as blue badge misuse, theft, and Council Tax and business rate fraud.

But report into the work the unit has done in the past year reveals that a huge chunk of recent investigations involved claims of fraud relating to Covid 19 grant schemes.

Out of the £1.66m in fraud or financial irregularity identified by the team in the past year, £1.027m related to Covid grants.

The report said the “unprecedented” need to award the grants as soon as possible meant it was “inevitable” that some grants ended up in the hands of people who were not entitled to them.

At the start of lockdown the Government introduced a grant scheme to keep business afloat in a period when many were unable to open or operate as normal.

Ombudsman declines to investigate complaint over Covid grant

Local Council’s were tasked with handing out the grants, and in Bradford 28,490 grants worth £162,549,795 were handed out to local businesses through several different grant schemes.

The Government estimated that nationally around one per cent of grant’s would be paid as a result of “fraud and error” – and Councils would be able to claw this money back.

A report going to Bradford Council’s Governance and Audit Committee on Thursday says that in the financial year April 2020 to March 2021, there were 481 referrals made to the CIU.

Of these, 201 were directly in relation to the Covid-19 grant schemes.

151 investigations into Covid grants were concluded, and 89 of these investigations found that grants had been paid to business that were not eligible.

There were 79 cases involving grants to small businesses (totalling £800,000), nine involving retail, leisure and hospitality grants (totalling £225,000 and one relating to the discretionary grants scheme (£2,500).

Out of the £1.027m, just over £532,000 has so far been recovered, with work underway to reclaim the rest of the cash.

The report says: “The necessity to distribute the Covid 19 grant scheme payments, to support local businesses, was unprecedented and following the receipt of the funding Government guidance was to ensure that this was distributed at speed by Councils.

“This inevitably resulted in some payments being distributed without a robust application and declaration process which prevented any further enforcement action by the CIU, other than the recovery of any loss.”

The committee will be told that there have so far been no prosecutions or sanctions made against businesses, although five grant fraud cases have been referred to the West Yorkshire Joint Services on Financial Investigation – a move that often leads to prosecution.

And another eight investigations have yet to be finalised.

Referring to the level of fraud in the grants programme, the report says: “Although this figure of £1m is of concern, it should be noted in context of the amount that was paid out in Covid related grant schemes of £162m, signifying the loss identified is below the Government’s estimated level of fraud and error of one per cent.”