A foreign agency worker at City Hall tried to claim back the cost of obtaining a UK work visa by making an incorrect expenses claim, it can be revealed.
The worker – who has not been named but who is thought to be an IT specialist – tried to reclaim the £1,239 cost of the visa by claiming it was money he had spent booking a plane flight.
When it was explained that expenses claims were limited to £400, the worker then submitted three claims for the maximum amount permitted, and a fourth for the £39 that remained outstanding.
The near breach of the Greater London Authority’s financial rules only came to light following a chance investigation by its internal counter fraud team.
Critics are now questioning why the GLA covers the cost of immigration visas for temporary staff, amid concern at the rising cost of agency workers at City Hall.
The counter fraud report, revealed to the London Assembly, said: “One expense claim for £1,239 was coded as ‘Travel via flight’, however, this expense was a claim for a Certificate of Sponsorship from UK Visas & Immigration.
“The claim was investigated by the DARA [Directorate of Audit, Risk and Assurance] counter fraud and should have been paid for by the sponsoring organisation and not the agency worker.”
GLA auditor Mark Woodley told the London Assembly audit panel last week: “Somewhere along the line, the process slipped a bit with regards to that payment.”
Neil Garratt, the Tory chairman of the London Assembly’s audit panel, said he was “alarmed” to discover “multiple steps of questionable behaviour” in relation to the claim. “It was clearly known to not be a flight,” he said.
The panel was told that the GLA does cover the cost of work permits for foreign workers but this is normally done by a manager using a corporate credit card.
Dianne Tranmer, from the GLA’s corporate resources team, told the committee that steps were being taken to increase monitoring of agency staff.
But she admitted: “I’m not sure how many [visa] sponsorships we are doing.”
Latest figures show that City Hall is spending almost £9m a year on 104 agency staff, despite a slight reduction in the total number of temporary workers.
Agency workers are provided to the GLA by Reed, the recruitment agency. The agency bill for City Hall rose year-on-year from £8,241,004 to £8,955,133.
Under guidelines on agency staff introduced by the GLA last year, temporary workers are not meant to be used for more than 12 weeks.
However the average length of contract has increased from 40 to 54 weeks – more than a year.
There are “no clear plans” to reduce the number of agency staff, according to the GLA’s auditors.
Mr Garratt told The Standard afterwards: “No one could tell me if it's normal to sponsor an immigration visa for an agency temp, or even now many visas in total the GLA is sponsoring.
“Far from alarm that the £1,200 visa cost went in as a dodgy expenses claim, it was explained that they're often just put on a manager's credit card. This case only came to light through the auditors' random spot check so we will now have a full review.
“Meanwhile, the plan to lower the agency staff cost has failed as the bill soared even higher. Perhaps because, as we learned, there is no plan, it's just something they've been talking about for 18 months.
“Sometimes I wonder if Sadiq Khan's City Hall has a grip of anything at all.”
A GLA spokesman said that, following a review, the wrongful claim was not classed as having been made fraudulently.
He said: “The money has not been recouped, as the GLA should have paid for the Certificate of Sponsorship.”
The individual is no longer classed as an agency worker and is on a fixed-term contract that will end on December 31.
The spokesman said: “The GLA recognises that it should have paid directly for this Certificate of Sponsorship, rather than handling it as an expenses claim.
“Actions have been taken to ensure the processes are more clearly defined to avoid this happening in the future.”
