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Fraud busters, the Money Box savings challenge and air travel rights

Who is catching the fraudsters? We reveal the bottom five savings accounts. Will pensioners be better off after an FSA investigation into annuities and council tax benefit?

FRAUD BUSTERS
If there's something weird and it don't look good and you're defrauded , who you gonna call? From 1 April not the police. In future every fraud will be handled by a central agency and local police forces will take no responsibility. The head of Action Fraud explains why. And a fraud prevention expert gives his view.

COUNCIL TAX BENEFIT
Major changes are afoot to Council Tax Benefit. It disappears on 1 April and responsibility for helping low income households with their council tax moves to local councils. In England the national scheme will be replaced by potentially 326 different sets of rules - one for each local council. Thursday was the deadline for all councils to declare how they were dealing with the 10% cut in their funding. Who will pay the most?

SAVINGS
After last week's savings challenge - will any bank or building society move customers from a savings account paying a rubbish rate to one paying a decent rate - we reveal the bottom five savings accounts on the market. We also explain why we were right and the Post Office was wrong when it told savers of a cut in their savings rate after it had happened. The Post Office has now 'revoked' the cut and will make sure it gives the correct notice before it is re-imposed.

ANNUITIES
For many years Money Box has been complaining about the way annuities are sold by insurance firms and the glacial pace of improvements. This week the Financial Services Authority says the market is working badly enough for it to launch an investigation - what it calls a thematic review. Those of you with a long memory will remember its previous review in 2008. Not much has changed.

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30 minutes

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  • Sat 2 Feb 2013 12:00
  • Sat 2 Feb 2013 12:04
  • Sun 3 Feb 2013 21:00

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