BUSINESSES in Gloucestershire are being urged to do more to reduce the hundreds of millions of pounds lost to fraud in the county each year.

Figures from the National Fraud Authority carried out by South West-based Blur Group, reveals that £113.3m a year is lost to fraud by businesses in the county, including £47.2m to procurement fraud.

A new resource, ‘The South West Business Guide to Eliminating Waste’, is being made available to companies to help tackle the problem via getguide@blurgroup.com

Philip Letts, CEO of Blur Group, whose cloud software and managed services platform helps companies eliminate waste and inefficiency in their procurement processes, said: “The figures are shocking. And of course, as well as companies wasting millions of their own potential profit, a major aspect of procurement fraud also falls within the public sector which means taxpayers’ money is potentially being wasted, too.

“Yet what I find encouraging is, since we moved our head office from London to the South West two years ago, we’re now working with a range of companies and councils in the region who are increasingly focused on tackling the problem, including using blur’s platform to reduce their procurement waste. But clearly wasteful spending remains a huge issue that organisations would want to address, be it inefficient processes, rogue spenders, deliberate fraud or failure to get the best price.”

Companies in the region using Blur’s platform include construction firms, solicitors, local authorities, South West Water and the GAIN network operating from Plymouth University.

Jon Hogg, Chief Marketing Officer of Blur Group added: “In tough markets, companies need to do all they can to remain competitive. Business leaders will be looking at their budgets for next year and it is absolutely vital that they should be proficient at eliminating waste internally in the services that they buy and the suppliers who they use.

“It’s accepted that some 20 per cent of all spend by organisations is unmanaged and un-contracted. This is an incredible amount vulnerable to wastage and fraud, but it also has the potential to be tackled.”

Free copies of The South West Business Guide to Eliminating Waste can be ordered via getguide@blurgroup.com