If Intent Is a ‘Fuzzy Line’, How Can FHDC Call It Fraud? Cllr Tim Prater and the £1.266m Question

When our public face asked Folkestone & Hythe District Council’s Cabinet Member for Finance and Governance how much of £1.266 million was actually fraud, Cllr Tim Prater (pictured) didn’t give us a figure.

Instead, he asked:

“What is the evidential difference between ‘this money should not have been claimed, but was claimed intentionally’, which is fraud, and ‘this money should not have been claimed, but was claimed unintentionally’ which is error?”

Then came the line which caught our attention: “Fuzzy line, around intention which can rarely be known, isn’t it?”

That’s an interesting response because FHDC had publicly announced that £1,266,259 had been “saved” across 466 proven cases involving money claimed “fraudulently or in error”. Cllr Prater himself was quoted saying: “The fraud work we are doing is so important because it means we can give the best possible support to the people who most deserve and need it.”

So our question wasn’t academic. FHDC had publicly introduced fraud into the £1.266m figure. We simply asked how much was fraud and how much was error.

The council’s Investigations and Fraud Overview 2025/26 doesn’t tell us. It records 466 outcomes collectively beneath the heading “Fraud or Error Proven”, covering Council Tax, Housing Benefit, tenancy investigations and parking, without separating deliberate fraud from mistakes.

And this is where Cllr Prater’s “fuzzy line” around intention becomes important.

Because FHDC’s own Anti-Fraud Policy has already drawn that line.

The policy defines fraud as knowingly or dishonestly making a false statement or representation “with intent” to obtain a financial advantage, or knowingly or dishonestly failing to report a change of circumstances with that intention. It separately deals with incorrect statements, negligence and failures to correct errors.

That means an incorrect claim, discount or payment isn’t automatically fraud.

If FHDC cannot establish an evidential basis for the necessary dishonest intent, it cannot simply convert an incorrect claim or overpayment into fraud by attaching the word to it.

There is an important distinction here. FHDC doesn’t have to secure a criminal conviction before describing a case administratively as fraud, nor would we expect the council to publish personal evidence from individual investigations. But it should be able to explain the evidential test it uses and tell taxpayers how many cases met that test.

The Fraud Act 2006 reinforces why the distinction matters. Fraud by false representation requires dishonesty, knowledge that a representation is or might be untrue or misleading, and an intention to make a gain or cause another a loss or risk of loss. Fraud by failing to disclose information and fraud by abuse of position likewise involve dishonesty and an intention to gain or cause loss.

Not every FHDC fraud case would necessarily be prosecuted under the Fraud Act, and Council Tax, Housing Benefit and housing investigations can involve other legislation. An administrative fraud classification isn’t the same as somebody being found guilty of a criminal offence.

But intent isn’t an optional extra if conduct is being classified as fraud.

Cllr Prater also questioned whether carrying out more detailed work to establish intention would represent value for taxpayers.

Yet FHDC’s own anti-fraud policy says that “in all cases investigated” an Investigation Officer produces a report setting out their actions, conclusions and recommendations, after which management determines what action should follow.

We aren’t asking FHDC to reinvestigate 466 cases. We’re asking what its completed investigations concluded.

If its records identify particular outcomes as fraud, error or something else, then how many fall into each category? If FHDC doesn’t record that distinction, it can simply say so.

The £1.266m headline raises another issue.

Of the total, £336,000 relates to eight tenancy cases. That isn’t £336,000 recovered in cash but a notional value of £42,000 for each property returned to proper use. A further £316,419 represents future-year Council Tax savings. Together those two elements total £652,419 — 51.5% of the £1,266,259 headline figure.

Those savings have value. But future savings and notional savings aren’t the same as money previously paid out and subsequently recovered.

That makes Cllr Prater’s description of the report as concerning money which “should not have been claimed, was, and following investigation was stopped or claimed back” too broad. More than half of the headline figure consists of future-year and notional savings.

Nor is separating fraud from error an unusual exercise.

The Department for Work and Pensions publishes national benefit statistics separately as Fraud, Claimant Error and Official Error. Claimant error covers incorrect payments where there is no evidence or suspicion of fraudulent intent, while official error includes mistakes by the DWP, a local authority or HMRC.

The Local Government Transparency Code also recommends councils publish the number of occasions on which fraud and irregularity were identified, their monetary values and the amounts recovered. It’s a recommendation rather than a mandatory requirement, but it’s remarkably close to what we’ve asked FHDC to provide.

Nobody is suggesting FHDC shouldn’t investigate genuine fraud. It should.

But fraud and error aren’t interchangeable.

It would be wrong to say FHDC has accused all 466 cases of fraud. It hasn’t.

That’s precisely the problem.

We still don’t know how many of those cases were classified as fraud, how many were errors, or how much of the £1,266,259 belongs to either category.

So the question remains:

Of the 466 cases recorded as “Fraud or Error Proven”, how many were fraud, how many were error, and what was the financial value of each?

Because if FHDC has evidence sufficient to classify cases as fraud, it ought to be able to tell taxpayers how many there were.

And if it cannot distinguish the fraud from the error, there’s an equally obvious question:

How does it know how much fraud it found?

The Shepway Vox Team

Deliciously Different Dissent