Raising fraud awareness

Report: 17
Date: 14 June 2010
By: Director of Audit, Risk and Assurance and the Director of Resources on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

The Director of Audit, Risk and Assurance and the MPS Director of Resources jointly sponsored an initial programme to raise the level of fraud awareness within the MPS and MPA. The attached Audit Commission report summarises the outcome of the programme which was conducted in 2008/09. activity. A further series of workshops are planned for later this year.

A. Recommendation

Members are asked to:-

1. Note the outcome of the initial programme of activity to raise fraud awareness and accept the Audit Commission report.
2. Endorse the accepted and agreed action plan.

B. Supporting information

Background

1. In the financial year 2008/09 a programme of events to raise the level of fraud awareness amongst managers and key financial personnel was conducted in the MPA and MPS.

2. The fraud awareness workshops were held on MPS premises and conducted by Audit Commission personnel, supported by MPS Finance Services and the Directorate of Audit, Risk and Assurance staff. The workshops centred around the use of a toolkit developed by the Audit Commission called Changing Organisational Cultures. The toolkit comprises a pre-event web-based survey, a half-day participative event involving electronic voting and a report from the Audit Commission of the outcome of the programme. Whilst the on-line questionnaire was adjusted to make it apposite to the MPS, the basic structure remained the same as used in other public bodies in order to obtain comparative data to other users of the toolkit.

3. Fourteen events were held at which over 200 MPA and MPS staff attended. A shortened event was also held for the MPS Management Board. This is the largest programme of events held using the Audit Commission toolkit. The events were positively viewed by the attendees and the participative elements were particularly well received.

Outcome

4. The Audit Commission report on the outcome of the programme is attached as Appendix 1 to this report. It contains the comparison of MPS results against those of other bodies, feedback from staff attending the events and makes twenty-one recommendations to further improve the counter fraud culture and procedures within the MPS. It should also be noted that the workshops were in held in the financial year 2008/09 and developments and proposals, in particular, around improving governance and compliance have occurred since that time. We will be running a further series of workshops this year to determine the current perceptions around fraud awareness and compliance.

5. The response to each of the recommendations is shown in the action plan attached at Appendix 1 to the Audit Commission’s report. Nineteen of the twenty-one recommendations were agreed with key initiatives to address the majority. These include;

• Embedding the 5’Ps providing a strong message ‘from the top’ about personal integrity, compliance and professional standards.
• Introduction of the Compliance Framework
• Proposed Managers Annual Assurance Statements
• New operating procedures on compliance and fraud prevention
• Improving information on non-compliance and fraud prevention(via induction training and use of intranet)
• Development of a joint MPA/MPS Fraud Prevention Strategy

Fraud Prevention Strategy

6. A fraud prevention strategy for the MPA and MPS is being developed jointly. This will incorporate the appropriate recommendations from the Audit Commission report as well as bringing together the range of activities within the MPA and MPS that collectively contribute to fraud prevention and detection. The fraud strategy, together with a fraud risk assessment, will be presented to the September 2010 meeting of this Committee.

C. Race and equality impact

This report has no direct implications but the individual policies and strategies that form the fraud prevention and detection arrangements will be subject to equalities impact assessments.

D. Financial implications

This report has no direct financial implications as the costs of implementing recommendations will be met from within existing budgets.

E. Legal implications

None given.

F. Background papers

• Appendix 1 Audit Commission Report – Raising Fraud Awareness

G. Contact details

Report author: Ken Gort, MPA Head of Counter Fraud, Joy Lincoln, MPS Lead Accountant

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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