A civil servant was sacked after an investigation found he worked three full-time jobs at different departments at the same time.
The man worked at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department of Health and Social Care and two other departments, holding three jobs concurrently during two separate time frames.
The discovery is outlined in a report from the National Fraud Initiative – a data matching exercise carried out by the Public Sector Fraud Authority every two years to detect and prevent fraud which involves more than 1,100 organisations across the public and private sectors.
The NFI’s 2022-23 exercise identified a Defra employee who had been paid by both Defra and DHSC for full-time roles. Following an investigation, the government found that this person held three roles in three government departments during two separate time frames.
He held two different vetting clearances (CTC and SC) concurrently with different departments, unbeknown to the vetting team or departments.
The report described this behaviour as “polygamous” working and said it is an “emerging risk area following changes to working practices since Covid-19, where many organisations now allow staff work remotely or on a hybrid basis as normal operating procedures”.
To gain extra employment within the civil service, the individual withheld his civil service employment history, the report said.
After the investigation into the official was concluded, the employee – who had left DHSC at this point – was dismissed from Defra and the two other civil service organisations he was working for with immediate effect.
The case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service, with the defendant subsequently charged and the case then referred to the Crown Court.
Defra has been participating in the NFI since 2018. A statement from a Defra spokesperson within the NFI report says: “We concluded that by taking part in the NFI, Defra was able to find and stop this simultaneous employment’”
A government spokesperson said: "While we cannot comment on specific cases, this government has stepped up its efforts to fight public sector fraud.
“We constantly look to improve detection processes and recently implemented new centralised checks to prevent this type of fraud. Moreover, we have expanded the use of data analytics within the National Fraud Initiative, which helped to identify £510m in fraud and errors across the public sector between 2022 and 2024."