Lambeth Council has denied the borough is a hotbed of benefit fraudsters, even though up to 10 times more fraud is being detected there than in surrounding areas.

Figures for 2006/07 showed £965,720 of fraud was detected in Lambeth while only £90,000 was uncovered in Merton and £180,000 in Wandsworth.

The council denied there was a greater amount of fraud going on in Lambeth, saying that its hardline approach to the crime simply meant more people were being caught.

A town hall spokesman pointed to trials of ground-breaking voice recognition technology to counter fraud and the employment of a specialist fraud-busting police officer working for the council as reasons why detection levels were higher.

Some 377 out of 2,000 people telephone interviewed with the lie detector technology were found to be cheating their way to benefits, which the council said helped to prevent £450,000 in possible benefit fraud.

The addition of a police officer has also meant a number of serious fraud cases have been uncovered where tenancy and housing benefit fraud was only the "tip of the iceberg", the spokesman said.

He said immigration fraud, multiple mortgage frauds and money laundering had also been cracked by the borough's investigators.

Lambeth Council's cabinet member for finance, Councillor Jim Dickson, said: "We have a clear and tough policy of zero-tolerance of fraud and are leading the way in employing innovative techniques and new technologies to detect the cheats, work which is saving council tax payers in Lambeth hundreds of thousands of pounds."

But Lib Dem councillor Julian Heather said he believed more could still be done to bust people on housing benefits sub-letting their homes.

He said housing fraudsters could easily evade current techniques to catch them, which simply involved organising meetings at the tenant's registered address that fraudsters could easily attend whether they lived there or not.

The council said its hardline policy against housing fraud was paying off with the housing investigation team recently recovering 35 properties that were either obtained illegally or where tenants had breached their condition of tenancy.