So far, 13,775 whistleblower reports have been received by HMRC about fraud against the furlough scheme as people report their employers, and ex-employers, says law firm Pinsent Masons.

There were many complex and changeable rules surrounding furlough, so error as well as fraud are known to have been commonplace. In total, employers claimed £70bn from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme which ran from April 2020 to September 2022. There was an estimated £5.5bn in furlough fraud over the period, representing 9% of all claims.

The sheer number of furlough claims at the height of the pandemic – and the need to make the payments immediately – made it very difficult for HMRC to spot fraudulent claims. However, Andrew Sackey, partner at Pinsent Masons, says HMRC has since added a significant amount of resource to its investigation teams to pursue fraudulent or inaccurate furlough claims, with an additional 2,000 staff hired and trained up to tackle abuse of the jobs scheme, along with other covid support programmes.

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