Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of audit trails in local government expenditure spending; and what estimate he has made of the incidence of accidental duplicate payments to local government suppliers in each of the last five years.

Whilst we do not centrally hold detailed information on local authorities’ duplicate payments, in my Department's publication “50 ways to save”, we observed that councils could save money by conducting audits of potential duplicate payments and reforming accounts payable processes.

This was based on research by Experian of both local and central government bodies, suggesting duplicate payments could cost taxpayers up to £147 million a year.

As stated in my answer of 3 September 2014, Official Report, Column 265W, my own Department has put this best practice into action and delivered savings of £100,000 by recovering duplicate payments made since 2006.