UK public sector workers caught in multi-job fraud crackdown

Hundreds of public sector workers have been caught secretly taking salaries from multiple jobs – after one civil servant who held five roles while working from home was found guilty of fraud.

The Cabinet Office's National Fraud Initiative has identified at least 301 public sector employees engaging in so-called 'polygamous working' since 2016.

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The body, which compared personnel data held by different government bodies, recovered £1.35million in fraudulent salary payments over the same ten-year period.

The revelations come as Kashim Chowdhury, 56, who exploited post-Covid work-from-home culture to earn more than £280,000 of taxpayers' cash was convicted of nine counts of fraud yesterday.

He took sick days and holidays in an attempt to manage his workload and keep the ruse going, allegedly applying make-up to appear ill on a video call with bosses, although his performance was generally regarded to be poor.

Prosecutors at Southwark Crown Court said he 'positively lied about his employment history and having other full-time jobs'.

According to sources within Whitehall, Chowdhury is just one of many civil servants who work multiple jobs under the radar to boost their salaries.

They claimed the case highlights serious deficiencies in accountability and productivity, which in turn allow 'polygamous working' to take place.

William Yarwood, the campaigns director at the TaxPayers' Alliance, also urged the Government to tighten employment checks on public sector workers.

'Public sector workers pocketing multiple full-time salaries is an outrageous abuse of taxpayers' money,' he told the Daily Mail.

'The fact that hundreds have reportedly been caught doing so raises serious questions about government oversight.

'Ministers must urgently launch a crackdown, tighten employment checks and ensure anyone found deliberately gaming the system faces the sack.'

The National Fraud Initiative said it was working to identify more employees who had been abusing the system in a similar way.

In the 2024 to 2025 financial year, they identified 13 cases of polygamous working.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said: 'The National Fraud Initiative continues to act as a key tool in protecting the taxpayer's hard-earned cash, with a recent pilot across local boroughs making almost £490,000 of savings.'

The Civil Service has previously faced criticism over its failure to dismiss underperforming employees.

Last year, the Civil Service had more than 442,000 full-time employees on its payroll, compared with 316,790 in 2016 and 382,945 in 2021.

Chowdhury, whose identity was first revealed by the Mail in April last year, was remanded in custody yesterday and will be sentenced at a later date.

The judge, His Honour Mark Weekes, said the defendant approached the case 'on a somewhat unrealistic basis'.

The court heard Chowdhury, who turned 56 yesterday, began working for Tower Hamlets Council in February 2020, before taking a second job with Defra in April 2021.

This was despite him going through the Government's vetting procedures, designed to ensure rogue agents do not make it into Whitehall.

By September 2023, he had taken on nine different full-time jobs with various government departments and public bodies, including the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care.

At its height, in May 2023, he was being paid for five full-time roles, unbeknown to bosses.

This meant he was contracted to work 183 hours a week – more than the 168 hours which actually exist in seven days.

One of these jobs was at the UK Health Security Agency, where his work during his seven-month stint between 2022 and 2023 was described by his project line manager as 'very poor'.

Colleague Carol Hedland told jurors: 'I would describe his conduct, attitude, productivity, performance and obviously attendance as being very poor.'

She said she tried to raise the matter with Chowdhury over the telephone but he accused her of 'badgering' him and hung up.

Another former colleague, at the Home Office, described how Chowdhury would miss Teams meetings, and was 'incredibly rude' in a catch-up meeting to discuss his dismal performance during his probation period.

Richard Arkless said: 'He said all offers of help were just for show, he wasn't interested in the job.'

'He then went on sick again. He had not improved his conduct, in fact it diminished.'

Former colleagues told the Mail that Chowdhury lived like a hermit and was not prone to extravagance, while the court heard he had squirrelled away £300,000 during the three-year fraud period.

Prosecutor Lucy Organ told the court Chowdhury was 'exploiting decent, honest people who do not think you would have two full-time jobs at the same time'.

She said: 'I asked Mr Chowdhury if it was acceptable to have two full-time jobs at the same time for a year.'

'After giving his normal response about his mental health being poor at the time, his actual response was: it never crossed his mind it was a problem to have two full-time jobs at the same time.'

'He can't say, "Yes, I think that's dishonest". He knows you [the jurors], as reasonable people will think it's dishonest, he's in a Catch-22 and says: "It didn't cross my mind".'

'It very much did cross his mind. He sought to hide it at every time. You only seek to hide it if there's something wrong with what you are doing.'

Chowdhury denied dishonesty and said he had failed to disclose some of his overlapping jobs because he was suffering from stress, panic and post-traumatic stress disorder related to a previous job.

He told jurors: 'I wasn't checking what I was saying or doing on those [job application] forms. I just wanted to hit the submit button.'

He accepted that he had failed to complete employment forms accurately but added: 'I do not believe there was criminal intent.'

He said the jobs were 'a distraction' from issues in his personal life, including his mother's deteriorating health.

He also claimed that they gave him 'a link to the outside world', despite working almost entirely remotely and often refusing to turn on his camera for meetings or attend staff away days.

Public sector workers have been offered pay increases worth 10.5 per cent as talks on a new pay deal enter an endgame before planned nationwide strikes on Thursday.

It is understood that the headline rate of 10.5 per cent would be significantly exceeded by pay increases for lower-earning public and civil servants, some of whom would benefit from wage increases of up to 17.8 per cent over the lifespan of the proposed deal.

The Government proposal runs until the early months of 2029, with an additional back payment of €1,200 or two per cent, whichever is higher, in 2026 – which would bring pay increases for 2026 to four per cent overall.

After a weekend in which talks came close to collapse, Government and union negotiators met again on Sunday with more talks planned from Monday morning.

Sources said the offer would in real terms be worth 11 per cent cumulatively. It includes an element covering local bargaining.

An agreed deal is still not certain, with union bosses warning members on Sunday that talks were “very difficult” and some pessimism among the unions about the offer.

Tánaiste Simon Harris claimed the strikes were not inevitable, and said the Government had tabled a “substantially revised and improved offer” to the unions.

Harris warned that strikes were “not consequence free”, and argued that the mandate for strike action came before the Government had put an offer on the table.

Meanwhile, unions are still making preparations for the strikes. In a note to members on Sunday, Kevin Callinan of Fórsa, the union with the highest number of members involved in the dispute said talks were “very difficult”.

He told his membership that preparations were “well under way” for the stoppage and associated rallies.

Callinan said last week any new agreement would have to deliver more than the 10.25 per cent the last one did.