Fraud in Barnet: The Scale of the Problem
From council employees moonlighting on your time to housing fraud stealing homes from the vulnerable, Barnet’s fraud problem runs deep.
Every pound lost to fraud in Barnet is a pound taken from vital services, from social care, libraries, road maintenance and support for the most vulnerable residents in Finchley Church End. The scale of fraud across the borough is not a minor footnote. It is a systemic problem that has been allowed to flourish, and which the current council has only recently begun to tackle seriously.
Employees Stealing Your Time, and Your Money
In October 2024, a Barnet Council employee named Sally Bodom appeared at Willesden Magistrates Court and pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud. Bodom had been working simultaneously as a full-time Business Support Officer at Barnet and a full-time worker at Croydon Council, both contracts explicitly prohibiting undeclared additional employment. She was paid over £60,000 in salary from Barnet alone during this period. Both councils had documented performance concerns: slow report writing, minimal workplace presence, poor availability. Yet it took a data-matching exercise in July 2024, over eight years after her dual employment began, to finally catch her.
This was not an isolated case. In September 2024, a separate case came to light involving Angelica Neoaurora, an agency worker placed at Barnet as a Strategy Officer, who was simultaneously working full-time at the Greater London Authority. Neoaurora had been convicted of the exact same offence previously as a civil servant, but did not disclose that conviction when applying to Barnet, used a different name, and provided a family member as a reference. She admitted six counts of fraud at Harrow Crown Court.
Two ‘polygamous working’ fraud convictions in a single year.
One fraudster had a prior conviction, and still slipped through Barnet’s vetting.
841 tenancy fraud cases investigated in 2024/25, a 55% year-on-year increase.
Housing Fraud: Homes Stolen from the Vulnerable
The fraud problem extends well beyond council employees. In 2024/25, Barnet’s Corporate Anti-Fraud Team investigated 841 cases of potential tenancy fraud, a 55% increase on the previous year. Over 250 were cases of alleged outright tenancy fraud, in which people illegally subletting or misusing social housing denied homes to genuinely vulnerable families.
Cases investigated included couples claiming sole occupancy discounts while living together, individuals subletting council properties for profit, and a man in another case who pleaded guilty to eight counts of fraud after fabricating his identity, employment and personal circumstances, including falsely claiming to be a football coach and a victim of domestic abuse, to jump the housing queue. Barnet’s investigators discovered his claimed address was a property he had voluntarily vacated himself.
The council’s fraud team also stopped 12 fraudulent Right-to-Buy applications in a single year, protecting an asset value of £1.53 million. And they pursued 59 criminal prosecutions for Blue Badge and travel fraud alone, a 293% increase on the year before.
A System That Rewards the Dishonest
The surge in fraud is not simply a sign of better detection. It reflects years of inadequate vetting, weak oversight and a council culture that prioritised expansion over accountability. The fact that a convicted fraudster could re-enter the council payroll under a different name is a governance failure, not bad luck. The fact that dual employment could go undetected for eight years suggests monitoring systems were either absent or ignored.
Reform UK supports tough anti-fraud measures, robust employee vetting, cross-council data sharing, and real consequences for those who steal from the public purse. But we also believe that the best defence against fraud is a lean, accountable council, not one bloated by unnecessary contracts and opaque management layers.
Barnet's residents deserve better than a council that can't account for its own staff.
