Counter Fraud Activity 2017-22
Reference: 25-26265
Date response sent: 26/09/2025
Details of enquiry
For the years 2017–2022, please provide Annual trust-level totals:
- Referrals to the NHS Counter Fraud Authority (count)
- Number of suspected fraud incidents
- Number of proven fraud incidents (disciplinary or criminal)
- £ value lost (total)
- £ value recovered (total)
Response sent
| Item | Questions and Answers | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 |
| 1 | Referrals to the NHS Counter Fraud Authority (count)
The number of Referrals received by the LCFS* and recorded on NHS CFA** case management system. |
≤5 | ≤5 | ≤5 | ≤5 | ≤5 | ≤5 |
| 2 | Number of suspected fraud incidents
The number of referrals notified to the LCFS* |
≤5 | ≤5 | ≤5 | ≤5 | ≤5 | 6 |
| 3 | Number of proven fraud incidents (disciplinary or criminal)
The number of criminal or disciplinary sanctions per calendar year related to a proven fraud incident. |
0 | 0 | ≤5 | 0 | ≤5 | 0 |
| 4 | £ value lost (total) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | £21,018.69 | 0 |
| 5 | £ value recovered (total) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | £5,780 | £3,500 |
Glossary:
LCFS* Local Counter Fraud Service
NHS CFA** NHS Counter Fraud Authority
The data you have requested for the period, 2017 to 2022 is presented in the table above, where we have masked low numbers with the symbol ‘≤5’, which indicates where numbers are equal to 5 or less than 5. The Trust follows the NHS England standard, established to not provide exact data where the numbers are smaller than 6 as this may lead to identification of individuals.
The Trust has engaged exemption from releasing exact low numbers in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) Section 40(2) (Information which constitutes the personal data of any person other than the applicant, where disclosure would not be permitted under GDPR, thereby breaching GDPR Principle (a): Lawfulness, fairness and transparency.
As this is an absolute exemption, we do not have to apply the Public Interest Test when engaging this exemption
The Trust recognises a high level of interest from public in how the public purse has been spent on services, and must balance this against disclosure of any small numbers and the years in which these instances occurred, which – whilst not directly identifying individuals, would nevertheless give rise to a disclosure of personal data, as follows:
- Although the year alone is not personal data, we have also to consider whether other information that is already available, or may become available, to any member of the public, could be combined with the data requested so as to enable identification of the individual(s) concerned.
- There is a high chance of recognition/identification of particular individuals by fellow patients/colleagues and/or others from the low numbers.
- This masking of low numbers is not a just a question of considering the means reasonably likely to be used by general public, but also the means likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals from data in the public domain now or in the future, and/or gained from other sources.