Middlesbrough Council - News Forum - Setting a light to the News

Council spending review on private detectives payment
Jan 8 2012 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

A SPENDING probe is under way at a North council after the Sunday Sun uncovered how private detectives have earned more than £35,000 for carrying out its work.
Our investigation has revealed Middlesbrough forked out £35,609 over four years to sleuths – that’s the highest amount paid out by any of the region’s authorities.
The council claims the work of the private investigators could have potentially saved taxpayers’ cash because – among other jobs – they were employed to snoop on folk planning to sue the council.
Using Freedom of Information laws, we learned other North councils have also hired their services, to carry out surveillance on folk suing authorities, serve legal papers and even for surveillance operations in child protection cases.
But after we unearthed the statistics, Middlesbrough council bosses pledged to review its spending on investigators.
A spokesman for the council said: “Private investigators are occasionally used to establish the validity of insurance claims against the local authority, and their use can lead to substantial savings for Council Tax payers.
“These figures also include payments to a local firm to ensure that confidential documents are served on individuals involved in court proceedings. These often relate to highly sensitive child welfare cases and cannot be sent by conventional mail.
“This approach was adopted as it was considered more cost-effective than using social workers to attempt to serve the documents in potentially difficult circumstances.
“The system will be reviewed with a view to improving the service and identifying potential savings.”
Middlesbrough was one of six North authorities who employed the services of private eyes in the last three years – for work that cost taxpayers £65,193 in all, with the Teesside council’s bill, which actually covered four years, accounting for 54% of that total.
Sunderland Council’s insurance team hired investigators just once, at a cost of £850, to undertake surveillance “in relation to the investigation of a personal injury claim” and Durham County Council have outsourced work to detectives for similar reasons.
A spokesman said they couldn’t tell us how many times they had hired private detectives or how much has been spent over the last three years, but “no more than £12,000” was spent in 2010.
The spokesman said: “In limited cases we have used private investigators because they are able to provide a service, which the council does not have officers trained or experienced in doing.
“In some cases, the private detectives were engaged if a process has to be served or specific surveillance such as covering insurance fraud.”
At Hartlepool £190 was spent by the Child & Adults department on two occasions, to bring in sleuths to locate people and serve court papers to them, a method also used by Northumberland where £458 was spent in three similar cases.
York City council employed detectives seven times in crime-detecting operations which cost £16,086 to man.
A spokesman said: “In all cases the purpose was the prevention and detection of crime, specifically concerning the protection of children.
“To disclose more information would put this aspect of child protection at risk. If those under suspicion become aware of the council’s methods of investigation and enforcement they may become less effective.
“It is likely that they will find a way to avoid them, or at least try to.”
Gateshead, Stockton, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Newcastle Redcar and Cleveland all said they hadn’t hired investigators.

http://www.sundaysun.co.uk/news/north-e ... -30079015/