Our key stakeholders include NHS England, NHS Improvement and the Cabinet Office. We work collaboratively with them, as well as with the DHSC Anti-Fraud Unit, to deliver the full range of counter fraud activity across the NHS and the wider health group.
Our relationship with stakeholders is often supported by formal memorandums of understanding and information sharing agreements.
DHSC-NHSCFA framework agreement
The DHSC-NHSCFA framework agreement sets out how the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the NHSCFA will work in partnership to serve patients, the public and the taxpayer, and how both the NHSCFA and the Department discharge their accountability.
The agreement defines the key elements of our relationship with the DHSC, and in particular the DHSC Anti-Fraud Unit which is our departmental sponsor.
This agreement is available in our working agreements section.
NHS England
The NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and NHS England maintain a strategic and operational partnership focused on protecting NHS resources from fraud, bribery, and corruption. This collaboration includes close alignment between NHSCFA and the NHS England Counter Fraud Team, ensuring consistent implementation of the Government Functional Standard GovS 013: Counter Fraud across the health system. NHSCFA provides expert guidance, intelligence, and analytical support to NHS England and Integrated Care Boards (ICBs), helping to embed effective counter fraud controls and promote a culture of fraud awareness and prevention.
This capability supports proactive fraud detection, trend analysis, and targeted interventions, making it a cornerstone of NHSCFA’s intelligence-led approach. Details of this agreement, along with other approved uses of NHS data, are available in the Data Uses Register maintained by NHS England and NHSCFA remains committed to advancing these agreements in the evolving landscape following the dissolution of NHS England.
NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA)
The NHS Counter Fraud Authority (NHSCFA) and the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) maintain a strategic and collaborative relationship aimed at protecting NHS resources from fraud, error, and financial loss. This partnership is underpinned by our aligned roles through an established, and continually developing, Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), which outlines the principles and framework for cooperation between the two organisations. The MoU formalises their shared commitment to fraud prevention and sets out the mechanisms for joint working, including the exchange of intelligence, coordination of investigations, and alignment of strategic objectives and the sharing of non-identifiable data to support fraud detection through proactive data analytics (and informing more explicit and specific data sharing, where this proves necessary to support investigations into suspected cases of fraud).
Through these arrangements, NHSCFA can access relevant NHSBSA datasets to support proactive fraud detection and analysis, while NHSBSA benefits from NHSCFA’s specialist counter fraud expertise. This structured approach ensures that both parties can act swiftly and in a coordinated manner to protect NHS funds and uphold public trust and share findings, where necessary, to ensure the robustness and veracity of underlying NHS systems that provide care.