In the early years, the NAFN Management Board responded to national concerns raised by the Audit Commission. Addressing the need for a joined up approach to combat cross-boundary fraud was NAFN’s key objective. The initial focus was on housing benefit investigations with regular fraud alerts circulated to members but ambitions to extend the service emerged very quickly.

After two years, Government funding was replaced by annual subscriptions from local authority members. Membership grew significantly and NAFN was restructured into five regional offices with Tameside MBC acting as the lead authority.

NAFN began to explore and establish effective links to the Police and other law enforcement agencies to better understand intelligence gathering and dissemination. Services to members were improved as a result of this collaboration and further enhanced by providing access to credit referencing services.

The Executive Board updated the NAFN Constitution and governance arrangements and adopted a new service delivery strategy working closely with the new Head of Service to strengthen the operational team. The NAFN ICT infrastructure was outsourced to Rochdale MBC. A Project Manager was appointed to deliver a series of service improvements for members. The Leadership Team was further strengthened with the appointment of a Membership and Communications Manager.

The fee model was reviewed and simplified. The membership fee was reduced to £1,000 with the introduction of modest charges for enquiries that require an input from the NAFN Service Team. Existing direct access to Callcredit and Equifax credit reporting systems were upgraded and an Authorised Officer Service was introduced to support tenancy and council tax fraud investigations.

In response to marketing and promotional initiatives, NAFN began to attract new membership from housing associations and wider public authorities with a significant increase in the number of user accounts. Monthly newsletters and regular alert bulletins were issued to members.

Introduction of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 presented a significant challenge for fraud investigations and the use of personal data. NAFN had already established the National Training and Best Practice Working Group to articulate the concerns of local government and wider public authorities. NAFN lobbied Central Government to ensure that local authorities retained powers to acquire communications data and submitted evidence to a Parliamentary Committee and the Anderson Report (‘A Question of Trust’). The Report recommended that, NAFN should be designated as the Single Point of Contact for all minor users of communications data.

Celebrating 20 Years

In 2017 NAFN celebrated twenty years of successful service delivery to members and organised a well-attended Summit in London. Mark Cheeseman (Cabinet Office) was the keynote speaker and the Executive Board and Service Delivery Team were pleased to share this achievement with a broad range of members.

Since 2017, NAFN has worked closely with partners and key stakeholders to promote and further develop the service offer to members and NAFN is now widely regarded as a key player in supporting criminal investigations through the sharing of data and intelligence.

Links with Central and Local Government have been strengthened through regular communications with the Cabinet Office, Home Office, Local Government Association (LGA) and other departments. NAFN now represents its members on a range of committees and working groups including Fighting Fraud and Corruption Locally.

Collaborative working has led to the introduction of new high-profile national services managed by NAFN. In 2017, investigations into right-to-buy fraud were strengthened through data sharing with National Hunter representing the banking sector. The following year, in partnership with the LGA, NAFN introduced the National Register of Taxi/PHV Licence Revocations and Refusals (NR3). In 2019, acting on behalf of Trading Standards, NAFN became the Single Point of Contact for the National Auto Number Plate Recognition System maintained by the Home Office.

NAFN continues to develop and promote a comprehensive programme of training and webinars to raise awareness, transfer skills and promote good practice. An e-learning package will be rolled out in 2020 to further enhance training initiatives and support continuing professional development for all members.

The organisation’s achievements have begun to be recognised and in 2019 NAFN won its first award: the iNetwork Innovation Award for Effective Information Sharing and Security.