National Fraud Initiative privacy notice
Sharing of personal information with the Cabinet Office for the purpose of the Data Matching Exercises and National Fraud Initiative.
Norfolk County Council (the County Council) has set out in its general privacy notice and employee privacy notice that, amongst other uses, it uses your personal information in connection with the prevention, detection and investigation of fraud. Specifically, the County Council is required by law to protect the public funds it administers, and it may share information provided to it with other bodies responsible for auditing, administering public funds or, where undertaking a public function, in order to prevent and detect fraud.
The County Council participates in the Cabinet Office’s National Fraud Initiative data matching exercise, and Fraud Hub.
The Cabinet Office is responsible for carrying out data matching exercises and initiatives nationally. Data matching involves comparing computer records held by one body against other computer records held by the same or another body to see how far they match. This is usually personal information. Computerised data matching allows potentially fraudulent claims and payments to be identified. Where a match is found it may indicate that there is an inconsistency which requires further investigation. No assumption can be made as to whether there is fraud, error or other explanation until an investigation is carried out.
For the National Fraud Initiative and Fraud Hub, we provide sets of data to the Cabinet Office for matching for each exercise undertaken. Details can be found on the GOV.uk website.
The use of data by the Cabinet Office in a data matching exercise is carried out with statutory authority under Part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014. It does not require the consent of the individuals concerned under the General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018.
All bodies participating in the Cabinet Office’s data matching exercises receive a report of matches to investigate instances of fraud, to investigate over- or under-payments and other errors, to take remedial action and to update their records accordingly.
Data matching by the Cabinet Office is subject to a Code of Practice.
For further information on data matching at Norfolk County Council contact:
Senior Auditor
Norfolk Audit Services
Finance and Commercial Services
7th Floor, County Hall, Martineau Lane, Norwich, NR1 2DW
Tel: 01603 223445
Email: Adrian.thompson@norfolk.gov.uk
This page was updated in June 2019