Case Study: Stoke-on-Trent City Council achieves £1.5m fraud recovery and unified investigations with Civica's Corporate Fraud Solution

Winner of the Fighting Fraud Locally 2012 Award

Stoke-on-Trent City Council wanted to move beyond occasional press releases and leaflet drops to a council-wide, high-publicity anti-fraud campaign that would raise public and staff awareness of multiple fraud types and drive referrals to its Corporate Fraud Team. To achieve this it worked with Civica, adopting Civica’s Corporate Fraud Solution and launching the "Spot the Cheater" campaign to bring all investigations under a single, corporate investigation management approach.

Civica implemented its Corporate Fraud Solution alongside the publicity campaign, enabling consolidated case management and wider coverage of fraud types. The initiative delivered measurable results: £1.1 million in benefit fraud overpayments, 64 properties recovered, 4 blue badges returned and £6,028 in fraudulent Council Tax discounts across 22 cases — a total of £1.5 million in identified fraud — demonstrating Civica’s solution improved detection and recovery.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council

Paul Bicknell

Corporate Fraud Manager