The total economic and social cost of fraud against individuals and businesses in England and Wales was £14.4 billion in the year to March 2024, according to a Home Office study. That’s broken down as fraud against individuals estimated at £9.2 billion and fraud against businesses, £5.2 billion.
The study did not include fraud against the public sector; the responsibility of the Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA). The research was reviewed by Prof Mark Button of the University of Portsmouth, an authority on counter-fraud. It’s described by its authors as ‘a conservative, credible, and robust baseline for understanding the scale and impact of fraud’. Meanwhile the Labour Government launched its counter-fraud strategy with a speech by Home Office minister Lord Hanson in London.
The £5.2 billion figure is broken down into ‘costs in anticipation of fraud’ of £4.2 billion, due to spends on staff training (about £1.2 billion), fraud detection software (£800m) and insurance among other things; ‘costs as a consequence of fraud’ of £0.8 billion, the losses to fraudsters and lost output; and £0.2 billion on response to fraud, including £100m on private investigation. Businesses in England and Wales with employees spent about £3.6 billion in the last 12 months in defence against fraud.
As for how accurate the study is, it puts the value of staff time in dealing with frauds in the last 12 months at £232m, which it admits is ‘potentially an underestimate of the true cost to businesses’.
For the document in full, ‘ Economic and social cost of fraud 2023 to 2024’, visit the Home Office website.
Background
The official Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) most recent Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) for the year to September 2025 estimated 4.2 million fraud incidents, ‘no statistically significant change’ from the year before.
Meanwhile the Home Office has published a ‘National Assessment Centre Fraud assessment 2025‘ which describes the threat as ‘typically overseas, online and tech-enabled’.
