HOUSING benefit cheats costing Burnley more than £1million a year, face criminal prosecution in a new council clampdown on fraud.

Although council investigators uncover more than £600,000 each year in corrupt rent and council tax allowance claims, only rarely has anyone been taken to court.

Instead cheats are made to repay the "stolen" cash -- often via deductions from their benefit payments.

Now that is all set to change following a decision to introduce a new prosecution policy, with council officers working closely with police and Benefits Agency staff to take offenders to court.

In addition successful prosecutions will be highly publicised to act as a major deterrent in the fight against fraud.

The policy, given the go-ahead by finance chiefs, will allow officers waive court action, depending on the offenders' personal circumstances, and instead impose a financial penalty of 30 per cent of benefit fraudulently obtained, in addition to ordering the wrongly-claimed cash to be repaid.

Councillors have agreed to set aside £7,500 for specialist training for officers to enable the policy to go ahead immediately.

Burnley will receive extra Government cash for introducing the prosecution policy -- all part of a nationwide crackdown on fraud, which has seen councils required to tighten up on claim verification, a Government-demanded procedure which has led to long delays in claim processing, leading to the council receiving hundreds of complaints from claimants.

Councillors were told fraud costs the council dear and prosecution would help limit the damage. The Government spending watchdog, The National Audit Office, called for action after revealing that false claims about low incomes or personal circumstances, cost around £1billion a year.

Although Burnley council has tracked down nearly double the amount of fraud claims demanded by the the Government, Rob Aspbury, the man in charge of council investigations, agrees the total uncovered form only the tip of the fraud iceberg.

"I believe there is much more to go for and we are taking further steps to ensure we take full advantage of the new laws which provide us with more powers to deal with the problem," he said. He added that in the past only cases where organised fraud was uncovered did the authority press for action in the criminal courts .

The council, he added, had adopted a pro-active policy including regular home visits and a confidential hot-line which people could call to provide information on cheating.

Burnley people receive around £24 million a year in Government housing and council tax benefits.

Around 74 per cent of the 5,300 tenants in Burnley and Padiham Community housing properties are on some form of housing benefit -- available to low income households to help them meet their rents.

About 65 per cent of tenants pay no rent at all.

Mr Aspbury said that although his department was increasingly vigilant on cheating, its main aim was to ensure that low income families who qualified for benefit received it.

"We are here to help and we don't want people to be put off claiming what they are entitled to," he added.