The Corporate Investigation Unit carries out both Investigative work and preventative work.

The team consists of 7 members led by a unit manager with 3 working on Investigations and prosecutions and 3 on data intelligence and matching. The unit manager provides support and advice to both areas.

There are 3.8 full-time equivalent (fte) members of staff working on investigations, 3.4 fte members of staff working on prevention, and 1 part-time (pt) member of staff working on strategy, policy and supervision of the team. An additional resource was utilised for a five-month period.

Prevention work includes the Council Tax Counter Fraud initiative looking at single person discounts and proactive work harnessing data and technology to identify and disrupt fraud from before it enters council systems. 

The number of accredited officers ACFS is 4 .

The number of occasions the team have used powers under the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud (Power to Require Information) (England) Regulations 2013 is 5.

The gross budget for the whole service is £376,314 with £213,061 spent on investigations (Officer salaries and legal costs) and prosecutions, and £141,304 spent on prevention and intelligence.

The team did 233 fraud prevention checks in the year and carried out 21 investigations.