THE amount of people being investigated for housing benefit fraud in the Stroud district has increased significantly in the last year.

The district council says this is because it has been cracking down on benefit fraud and more members of the public are bringing cases to the their attention.

The amount of referrals the housing benefit fraud division receive has doubled, from 149 in 2006/07 to 305 in 2007/08. Of those 305 the benefit fraud team investigated 217 cases, up from 137 investigated the year before.

Benefits service manager at Stroud District Council, Shaun Butler, said anyone illegally claiming would get caught eventually.

He said: "Everyone will be caught because we do so many checks on all kinds of sources. It would be better for them to tell us their correct circumstances first than try and get away with it."

Last year residents in the Stroud district illegally claimed £21,876 from the council in housing benefits, however this is down on the year before when £69,344 was illegally claimed.

This was due to three large cases of benefit fraud being uncovered in which the claimants had been illegally claiming benefit for a long period of time.

"We are putting a lot more into awareness of housing benefit fraud so when members of staff at the council have suspicions about fraud going on they contact the fraud team immediately," said Mr Butcher.

"I think all the advertising of benefit fraud in the media has been a factor in pushing up the figures this year.

"There are television campaigns telling the public how they can report benefit fraud and that has resulted in us receiving more referrals for housing benefit fraud."

Mr Butcher said that the frauds they deal with are usually people not declaring everything they earn on their claim forms or not telling the council they have a partner.

"Their excuses are usually that they didn’t realise they had to declare the information and they didn’t know they were doing anything wrong or they say they did it to get out of debt problems," added Mr Butcher.

"What they don’t realise is they will be in more of a problem when they get caught out."

To report a case of benefit fraud call the National Benefit Fraud Hotline on 0800 854 440. It is free and confidential and lines are open between 7am and 11pm, seven days a week.