Accredited official statistics

Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2016/17 preliminary estimates

Preliminary estimates of fraud and error levels in the benefit system in Great Britain in the financial year 2016/17.

• From: Department for Work and Pensions
• Published: 18 May 2017
• Last updated: 30 May 2017
  Show all updates

  1. 30 May 2017

     Revised tables published with updated characteristics for Housing Benefit for both overpayments (Table 6) and underpayments (Table 12). The data has been corrected in line with the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice and DWP Revisions Policy.

  2. 18 May 2017

     First published.

This publication was withdrawn on 30 November 2017

We replaced these preliminary estimates with more up to date estimates of fraud and error in the benefit system on 30 November 2017.

Documents

Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2016/17 preliminary estimates

Ref: ISBN 978-1-78425-935-8

PDF, 489 KB, 16 pages

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Tables: Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2016/17 preliminary estimates

ODS, 298 KB

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Details

The main points from the report are:

• 2.0% of total benefit expenditure was overpaid due to fraud and error (up from 1.9% in 2015/16)
• the estimated value of overpayments is £3.5 billion (a rise from the 2015/16 estimated value of £3.3 billion)
• the net government loss, after recoveries, is £2.4 billion, or 1.4% of benefit expenditure
• 0.9% of total benefit expenditure (or £1.6 billion) was underpaid due to fraud and error

Read more about which benefits we measure and how we measure them in the background information and methodology note.

Use our online tool to explore DWP’s fraud and error statistics.