Councils and data collection

[selfishtoaster]

Strange one here...

My sister received a letter today from the council saying that they have reason to believe that she is no longer living alone and so is no longer eligible for Single Persons Discount (SDP).
The letter claims they have "access to data matching intelligence, including government data, to review these discounts" and "a number of checks which have indicated to us that there may be one or more additional adults that are linked to your address"

This is firmly a load of rubbish as she does live by herself but she's in a twizzy anyhow and thinks she should sacrifice her SDP in case she's committing an unknown crime. I've advised her to continue claiming but we'll see how that goes...

Personally, I'm more interested in what data sets a council may have access to, if they have any at all, and how they use them. I strongly suspect in this case they have nothing else the letter would list something specific.

I would think about making an FOI request on their data collection but since I'm quite unsure of what specific question to ask it probably wouldn't get very far...

Any advice?

[peterb]

She needs to contact the council and ask why. Make sure the letter is genuine though.

Councils do have access to data for the purposes of detecting fraud - and cllaiming SPD for council tax when not eligible would count as fraud.

But she needs to talk to the council and if necessary make a declaration that she is the sole occupant of her house (or at least the sole occupant eligible for council tax)

[Bagnaj97]

It'll likely be a system like this - https://www.transunion.co.uk/markets...ntercept-react rather than the council directly comparing data sets.

[spacein_vader]

The council will have access to many datasets. Some their own (some benefits, council tax, electoral roll etc.) Some from other government agencies (other benefits, health data from nhs) but the most likely culprit here is they've got their latest Experian data and more than one person with a credit score has shown up as at that address.

[selfishtoaster]

The council will have access to many datasets. Some their own (some benefits, council tax, electoral roll etc.) Some from other government agencies (other benefits, health data from nhs) but the most likely culprit here is they've got their latest Experian data and more than one person with a credit score has shown up as at that address.

That's interesting as the bottom of the document is an advertisement for creditexpert.co.uk. I initially just thought it was an ad for them to part-fund the letters but if they are using credit scores that would align with what you've said.