Council employee sacked after using allegedly stolen birth certificate to get job

By Adrian Zorzut, Local Democracy Reporter

A West London council employee has been fired after authorities uncovered she used fake identification to get a job.

Concerns about the Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) council worker’s identity had been raised by colleagues at Lambeth council following a joint investigation with the Home Office.

The probe found one of the parties connected to its case work had been working for RBKC and was an “illegal overstayer” in the UK since 1999, using false documents with a fake name to score a job at the local authority, a council fraud report revealed.

The employee, who has not been named but started working with RBKC in December 2019,  had used a birth certificate, which she allegedly stole, a change of name deed and an allegedly doctored HMRC Tax Code letter to verify her identity.

The council’s own anti-fraud squad found the individual had arrived in the UK from Cameroon and was issued with a six-month visitor visa. Home Office records show the woman had her request to stay in the UK denied but never returned to Cameroon.

She later applied for a job at the council using a different name until she was arrested in January this year.

The report read: “A review of the documents she presented to the council as part of her recruitment showed that the birth certificate was genuine, possibly stolen at the source.

“It could not belong to the employee because she was born in Cameroon. The HMRC Tax Code letter was also real, but the details may have been fraudulently altered. However, we only had a scanned image and must handle the original to confirm this.”

The worker was suspended and failed to attend a HR meeting or hearing. She was then fired.

Pictured top: Kensington town hall (Picture: Hannah Neary)