£27k of council tech not returned by leavers

Sheffield City Council has dozens of laptops and mobile phones missing, a report states

At least 30 employees who left their Sheffield City Council jobs in the last year did not return their work devices, at a cost of £27,000 to the authority, a report has revealed.

If staff did not return their equipment within a reasonable amount of time, the unreturned items would be reported to the police as stolen, according to the fraud report.

Meanwhile, several council-owned mobile phones and laptops worth a total of nearly £14,000 were also lost or stolen in 2024-25, it stated.

The council said it was putting processes in place to tackle the problem, including charging individual departments if they failed to recover devices which had gone missing or had not been returned.

The Internal Audit Annual Fraud Report stated that a total of 32 devices "have at present not been returned by leavers to the organisation".

"These have a value of £27,200, and recovery is ongoing," it said.

"Should they not be recovered in a reasonable time frame, they will be reported as stolen and appropriate action taken."

Meanwhile, council data showed that in 2024-25, "eight mobile phones with a value of £1,840 were either lost or stolen", the report said.

"A further 14 laptops with a value of £11,900 were also either lost or stolen," it added.

Charging departments if devices could not be recovered would be an "incentive" to ensure such items were all accounted for correctly, the report said.

Blue badge fraud

The report also showed that 45 blue badge parking permits had been removed from members of the public who had misused them in 2024-25.

A recent change to the blue badge penalty system meant cautions could now be offered to the offender as an alternative to prosecution, it explained.

The council report said: "Parking services continues to remove blue badges where they are being abused.

"They were confiscated for misuse and the car driver issued with a penalty notice. These were instances where the badge holder was not present when used.

"Upon request, these were sent back to the badge holder with a reminder of their use."

The number of blue badges removed from members of the public in the most recent period was down from 86 offences in the previous year, the document stated.

The fall was potentially due to increased publicity, it said.

"The option to offer a caution has enabled a more cost-effective penalty which stays on record and can be used as evidence should the offender misuse a blue badge in the future and a prosecution pursued," according to the report.

"In 2024-25 no prosecutions took place. The service will undertake prosecutions where this is deemed to be appropriate."

The British Parking Association said that since 2016, misuse cases related to blue badges nationally had increased by over 1,000%.

The fraud report is due to be examined by members of Sheffield City Council's audit and standards committee later this week.

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