40 dead people paidpublic pensions

And amazingly 22,000 parking and bus passes for people with mobility problems and pensioners were also still at large despite them being registered to the dead.

The dead pensioners weren’t noticed by a variety of public pension bodies including the Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee (NILGOSC), which handles local council officers’ retirement incomes, until a National Fraud Initiative (NFI) trawl highlighted the blooper.

Since April 2010 over £2m has been recovered in pension payouts to dead people, according to a new report by the Northern Ireland Audit Office (NIAO).

Over 40 cases of error have been identified so far in matching 2010-11 pension records with death records

In one case a NILGOSC (local council worker) pensioner died in November 2008 but the pension paying body was not aware of this until it received data matches in January 2011. The resulting overpayment was almost £11,000.

The money was, apparently, recovered in full from the deceased’s bank account, the report reveals.

Another local government pensioner died in June 2009 but payments continued until an NFI data match made the pension paying body aware of the death. The overpayment of almost £12,000 was recovered in full in that case.

And a pensioner in receipt of a local health service pension died in January 2010. This only came to light following a data match and payments were eventually stopped in August 2011.

The surviving spouse was not aware that entitlement ceased on death. The resulting overpayment of almost £4,500 has been recovered in full, the report claims.

Further losses were incurred when pensioners went back to work without telling their pension paying body.

According to the NIAO: “Pension records were matched to payroll records, with a match indicating that a pensioner may have returned to work and abatement of pension may be required.

“This generated 3,580 matches, of which 3,250 had been investigated by 31 March 2012. Five errors were identified. Outcomes for the period 1 April 2010 to 31 March 2012 in relation to pension abatements amounted to almost £83,000.”

Blue Badges are awarded to people with severe mobility problems and entitle holders to a range of parking concessions.

Incredibly, the NIAO found over 7,000 matches between Blue Badges holders and deceased persons in Northern Ireland, of which 202 have been investigated, with 141 badges cancelled.

The situation is even worse when it comes to free bus passes. There were over 15,000 matches between concessionary travel pass holders and deceased persons. By March 31, 2012, over 14,000 of these passes had been cancelled

The NIAO says the Department of Regional Development (DRD) needs to “undertake significant work on its blue badge data set to cleanse the data.”

“One example of data quality issues relates to cases where widows with the same initial as their deceased husbands have obtained a blue badge, using their deceased husbands’ national insurance number on the application form, thereby generating a match with death records,” the report states.

“In NIAO’s view, these cases should be recorded as errors, the badges cancelled and then properly reissued, if appropriate, with the full details of the applicant.

“DRD disagrees and believes that the use of an incorrect national insurance number in these cases does not invalidate the badge, as it has been issued appropriately,” it adds.

The UK Audit Commission calculates potential savings arising from the cancellation of Blue Badges based on the concessions values of £500 on the black market.

Using the Audit Commission’s methodology, cancellation of the 7,319 badges could lead to potential savings of £3,659,500.

But the NIAO says DRD thinks this is disrespectful to the families of the deceased.

“DRD told us that it does not agree with this methodology because it assumes that all blue badges which remain uncancelled after the death of the holder have been sold on the black market.

“It believes this is highly unlikely and also disrespectful to the close relatives of the deceased. A more likely explanation is that the badges have simply not been returned for cancellation.

“DRD told us that other controls are in place to detect the illegal use of blue badges, including a dedicated blue badge enforcement patrol,” it adds.

The report also reveals that Roads Service carried out an exercise to calculate the potential loss of parking revenue due to the misuse of deceased persons’ badges.

“This was based on parking charges in Belfast and on the fact that around seven per cent of total badges in circulation have been highlighted by the NFI as being in the name of deceased persons. This exercise resulted in an estimated maximum annual loss of parking revenue of £70,000,” the report says.