National Fraud Initiative: additional public services
Source: gov.uk (2025-11-13)

Find out about extra NFI services for public sector organisations, such as FraudHub, AppCheck and ReCheck.

Many of the risks addressed by the National Fraud Initiative (NFI) are also relevant to central government departments, agencies, arm’s-length bodies (ALBs), and other organisations, such as housing associations, academies, and community rehabilitation companies. A guide to the services available to such public sector organisations as voluntary participants under Schedule 9, Section 3 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 is listed below. Screening is carried out every 2 years (with data submission usually in October).

You can also read case studies (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-fraud-initiative-case-studies) showing how the NFI has helped other organisations.

Services by sector

Central government, academies, and community rehabilitation companies

Central government (including agencies or ALBs), academies and community rehabilitation companies can share the benefits of the NFI data matching by submitting payroll (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-fraud-initiative-additional-public-services#payroll-screening) and trade creditors’ (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-fraud-initiative-additional-public-services#creditors-screening) data. This screening can help to identify a range of issues. For example, employees committing benefit fraud or working elsewhere, VAT overpayments, duplicate trade creditor payments, or employees with interests in companies your organisation is trading with.

Should your organisation identify a particular fraud risk that the NFI might help you address through data matching, please email xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx).

Housing associations

Housing associations can share the benefits of the NFI data matching by submitting payroll (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-fraud-initiative-additional-public-services#payroll-screening), trade creditor payments (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-fraud-initiative-additional-public-services#creditors-screening), current housing tenants and tenants who have completed or are in the process of completing Right to Buy.

Housing associations that submit data relating to tenants who have completed or are in the process of completing Right to Buy can identify tenants who are:
- illegally subletting social housing
- illegally claiming benefits they are not entitled to (these matches would go back to the council paying the benefits)
- abusing the ‘Right to Acquire’ scheme
- making invalid applications for social housing
By identifying this type of fraud, social housing can be recovered and allocated to individuals who need it.

FraudHub

FraudHub provides a permanently accessible system that enables Local Authorities and other Public Sector organisations to work together by sharing and screening data in order to prevent and detect fraud or error.

Organisations that subscribe to FraudHub are able to submit data as frequently as they wish for matching against fresh data from a wide range of third-party sources.

FraudHub members are automatically alerted when new matches are identified, which enables organisations to quickly act on changes in circumstances, resulting in fraud and error savings and reduced costs associated with recovery of erroneous payments that may otherwise have been ongoing for a much longer period of time.

FraudHub allows members to check quickly and easily against a host of additional datasets, including:
- DDRI deceased persons
- Housing Benefit claimants
- Electoral Roll
- Blue Badge holders
- Payroll Data
- Right to Buy
- Concessionary Travel passes
- Small Business Rates Relief
- Business Rates
To find out more about FraudHub, please email xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx)

AppCheck

Every application you receive carries a risk that the person has failed to declare all of the relevant information. As a result, they receive a benefit, service, or employment they are not entitled to. AppCheck provides a real-time authentication process across your organisation as a whole. This minimises the costly investigations that would follow once fraud is detected.

AppCheck can help at the point of application to ensure only those with a genuine entitlement get the services they need.

AppCheck can be used to detect fraud in the following areas:
- Tenants subletting
- Right to Buy/Acquire
- Tenancy succession
- Council Tax Single Person Discount
- Employees who have not disclosed other business interests
- Concessionary travel pass
- Housing applications
To find out more about AppCheck, please email xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx)

ReCheck

ReCheck is a flexible data-matching service that complements the NFI biennial national exercise. This service allows you to re-perform all of the existing NFI data matching, except trade creditor payments reports, at a time that suits you. You control when you upload your organisation’s datasets for internal matching. The service includes data from the most recent NFI exercise, as well as refreshed housing benefits, student loans, and Amberhill police data.

The service:
- responds to your operational needs and organisational risks, allowing you to decide how often you re-perform matching
- will help detect fraud either in your organisation or across multiple organisations that choose to come together as part of a data-matching syndicate
- generates high-quality data matches and makes them available immediately
- is undertaken using existing statutory data matching powers under part 6 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 and follows the Code of Data Matching Practice (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/code-of-data-matching-practice-for-national-fraud-initiative)
Subscribers to ReCheck pay an additional fee per dataset submitted, and a separate fee applies to ReCheck mortality screening.

Mortality screening

Mortality screening can help organisations identify, for example, pensioners, blue badge holders, concessionary pass holders, and applicants on a housing waiting list who are deceased. Doing so can highlight potentially fraudulent activity and/or overpayments that can subsequently be recovered.

The NFI offers mortality screening against the following:
- Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) deceased data, which includes details of the deaths of all UK citizens, including some of those who have died overseas. The data also includes National Insurance numbers to improve the accuracy of the resulting matches. *Disclosure of Death Registration Information (DDRI) – a list of deaths provided by the General Register Office (GRO) of England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Read some practical examples of how ReCheck and mortality screening can be used (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-fraud-initiative-case-studies/nfi-flexible-matching-and-mortality-screening-examples).

Timescales

Mortality screening to DWP deceased persons’ data takes place every 6 months, with data submissions in June and November.

Mortality screening to GRO DDRI data can be carried out at any point throughout the year by uploading your data to NFI ReCheck. Data is refreshed every two weeks.

For further information, please email xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx).

Payroll screening

The NFI can help you identify individuals who may be committing employment fraud by failing to work their contracted hours because they are employed elsewhere or are taking long-term sickness absences from one employer and working for another at the same time.

Publicising participation in the NFI should act as a strong deterrent against fraudulent employment applications and employee identity fraud.

Trade creditor screening

As part of the biennial national exercise, we provide trade creditor payment screening (suppliers of goods and services) and have developed a range of tests to identify duplicate payments. Aside from the financial benefits, data matches help to improve the efficiency of organisations’ trade creditor payment systems.

The NFI can help you identify duplicate payments and incorrect VAT payments that can be recovered, caused by incorrect supplier invoices, input errors, and VAT miscalculations. The reasons for this are wide-ranging, from human error to poor processes, controls that can be overridden, and the fact that accounting systems can only carry out basic checks.

The matching can also help to strengthen your internal control arrangements by highlighting system weaknesses or common errors within your trade creditor data. For example, we may identify multiple occurrences of the same trade creditor with different reference numbers or differently spelled organisation names.

How to get involved

To discuss your requirements or to take part, please email xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx). You can also look at the data specifications guide (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/national-fraud-initiative-public-sector-data-specifications), which sets out the data you would submit for screening.

The fees for the services are listed in this guide (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-fraud-initiative-fees-for-public-sector).

Bespoke services

The NFI data matching statutory powers allow data matching to prevent and detect fraud. If you have a data set that the NFI has not already collected that you feel may address a particular fraud risk to your organisation and therefore wish to carry out a data match, please email xxx@xxx.xx (mailto:xxx@xxx.xx)