Your investigators stop going into difficult interviews cold
The fly tipping suspect has a practised explanation ready. The ASB subject challenges the process from the first question. The tenancy fraudster has constructed a consistent cover story. The rogue trader's victim is embarrassed and reluctant to cause trouble.
Elicit prepares your enforcement officers for all of them - before the interview that matters.
The gap between knowing the procedure and performing under pressure
Council enforcement interviewing spans everything from first witness accounts to complex PACE suspect interviews. Government data shows that in 2024/25, councils took 572,000 fly-tipping enforcement actions and brought 1,377 court prosecutions - a conversion rate of 0.2%*. That gap reflects what happens throughout the evidence chain when interview skills are not matched to the challenge. In every case, investigative interviewing is a skill discipline that requires deliberate, structured practice against the specific types of subject your officers face.
-
1
Enforcement subjects are often more prepared than your officers A fly tipping suspect has a practised explanation for where the vehicle was. An ASB subject has thought carefully about what to admit and deny. A housing fraudster has constructed an internally consistent cover story. In each case, the person sitting opposite your officer has thought about this more recently than your officer has been trained for it. Meanwhile, fraud case volumes at councils rose by 98.9% over the five years to 2024/25 - while 40% of councils run counter-fraud work with staff in shared roles**. Structured practice changes that balance.
-
2
There is no objective feedback on real enforcement interviews Without data on question types, talk-time balance, and PACE phase coverage, officers repeat the same patterns case after case. What feels like a professional interview to the officer may look very different when measured against the standard. Elicit surfaces that gap in simulation - not in a live enforcement case where it affects an outcome.
-
3
Regulators, auditors, and courts expect evidence of structured training When an audit committee, an internal review, or a defending solicitor asks what interview training your officers received before conducting a formal PACE interview, a course attendance record is not a sufficient answer. Structured, session-level performance data changes that conversation - and Elicit produces it automatically at the end of every session.
-
4
Cuckooing, VAWG, and a duty of care your housing teams cannot delegate Under the Care Act 2014 (s.42), where a council has reasonable cause to suspect a vulnerable adult is at risk of abuse or neglect and cannot protect themselves, the council must make enquiries - regardless of whether the person holds assessed care and support needs. In cuckooing cases, where county lines networks have taken over a vulnerable person's council property, that duty sits with your housing and safeguarding teams from the moment a referral arrives. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 (s.65) has now created a specific cuckooing offence, but councils, RSLs, and private landlords cannot wait for statutory guidance before acting on obligations they already hold. NPCC data shows 44% of cuckooing victims are women - placing these cases squarely within the Violence Against Women and Girls agenda that is now a government priority at every level*****. The welfare and evidence-gathering interview is where that statutory duty becomes real, and it requires skills your teams have not systematically trained for.
The interview situations your investigators actually face - built for council enforcement reality.
Each scenario is drawn from the actual interview situations council investigators face. The subjects behave as the real person would - prepared, evasive, vulnerable, or hostile depending on the scenario. Several scenarios are PACE caution interviews, conducted under the Environmental Protection Act, Anti-Social Behaviour legislation, and the Housing Act, with correct caution administration built in. A selection from the library is shown below.
Embarrassed, self-blaming, reluctant to cause trouble. She almost did not come in. Exercises trauma-informed pacing, open account elicitation, and keeping a witness engaged and dignified without increasing her distress.
Cooperative on the surface, minimising in substance. Volunteers the minimum, redirects with humour, and fails to register the seriousness of the situation. Exercises account elicitation with a subject who is politely obstructive.
Professionally composed, protective of his team, and strategically positioning this as an isolated individual error. Exercises structured probing of management systems and the Challenge 25 training records, without accepting Craig's frame that this was someone else's fault.
PACE interview under caution. Kevin claims he lent the van to a mate. The waste contains mail bearing his home address. Exercises the s.33/s.34 EPA pivot when the keeper-not-driver defence is raised, evidence sequencing, and closing with a stated position on record.
Confrontational, defensive, and challenging the legitimacy of the interview process from the first question. Exercises de-escalation, professional composure, and keeping a structured interview on track when the subject is actively trying to derail it.
Rehearsed, plausible, with an internally consistent cover story and alternative explanations ready for every question. The most demanding scenario on the platform. Exercises inconsistency probing, structured evidence deployment, and closing with a version of events that can be tested against records.
Rogue trader victims, environmental enforcement complainants, vulnerable elderly witnesses. Exercises trauma-aware engagement, open account elicitation, and keeping reluctant witnesses cooperative and on record throughout.
Noise nuisance, licensing violations, fly tipping, littering, PSBO and CPN breaches. Several scenarios are conducted under caution per PACE requirements. Exercises structured probing, evidence sequencing, and compliance with the relevant enforcement legislation.
Housing tenancy fraud, ASB enforcement, illegal subletting, benefits and occupancy fraud. Subjects have prepared cover stories and have anticipated gaps in your evidence. Exercises inconsistency probing, structured evidence deployment, and closing with a version of events on record.
Your officers sit at the centre of Clear-Hold-Build
Council enforcement and community safety teams are not peripheral to the Clear-Hold-Build framework - they are the operational core of Hold and Build. Your officers conduct the welfare interviews, gather the intelligence, identify the safeguarding needs, and do the sustained community engagement that makes Clear-phase enforcement stick. Elicit is designed with that role in mind.
Enforcement and PACE interviews
When your enforcement officers take formal statements or conduct interviews under caution - planning violations, housing fraud, ASB, licensing - they need the same structured interview skills as police investigators. The difference is that council enforcement interviews receive far less systematic training. Elicit closes that gap.
Vulnerability, exploitation, and welfare interviews
Hold-phase work lands most heavily on council teams. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 (s.65) has created a specific cuckooing offence - and under the Care Act 2014 (s.42) and the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Safe Accommodation Duty, councils already carry statutory responsibilities toward the victims before any police arrest is made. NPCC data shows 44% of cuckooing victims are women, making these cases a VAWG priority. Cuckooing victims in council housing, domestic abuse referrals from housing officers, rogue trader victims - these are the interviews where welfare and evidence-gathering must happen simultaneously, under legal obligations your team cannot decline.
Community engagement and early intervention
Build outcomes depend on officers who can engage constructively with people who have reason to be suspicious of authority. Community trigger interviews, early intervention conversations with ASB-at-risk residents, and engagement with vulnerable tenants under an ASB case all require sustained rapport under conditions where the relationship has already been strained.
The Clear-Hold-Build framework originated in counterinsurgency doctrine and has been adapted by the UK Home Office for domestic serious organised crime response. Council teams that sit within Violence Reduction Unit partnerships or community safety board structures are already operating within CHB-aligned plans - often without using that language. Elicit scenario design maps directly to the interview skills those plans depend on. VRU commissioning teams: get in touch to discuss how Elicit fits within your funded capacity-building programmes.
For counter-fraud teams: the law has changed, and your training evidence needs to match.
The Failure to Prevent Fraud offence under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 is now in force. Large organisations meeting two of three thresholds - more than 250 employees, turnover over £36m, or balance sheet over £18m - are within scope; virtually all upper-tier and district councils in England qualify***. The defence requires demonstrating that reasonable fraud prevention procedures were in place - and structured investigator training is a core component of that. Council investigators detected £265m in fraud in 2024/25, returning £3.65 for every £1 spent on counter-fraud activity****. Council investigators conducting fraud interviews under caution also operate under PACE, meaning they carry dual compliance obligations. Elicit covers both.
What the duty requires from your organisation
Reasonable prevention procedures include documented, structured training for staff with investigative responsibilities. An attendance record for a day course is not sufficient evidence that training changed investigator behaviour. You need a system that produces performance data automatically - question-type ratios, PEACE phase coverage, improvement across sessions. That is what every Elicit debrief generates.
What Elicit produces as evidence
Every session generates a structured evaluation: question-type breakdown, PEACE phase coverage, information coverage score, and a timestamped PDF debrief exportable on demand. This is the documented training evidence that an organisation would cite in a Failure to Prevent Fraud defence - not assembled retrospectively, but produced automatically at the end of every session.
What this means for your audit committee and section 151 officer
Your section 151 officer and audit committee need training spend linked to measurable outcomes. Elicit gives you that link: not "we spent £X on training" but "here is the measurable improvement in open question ratio, PEACE phase coverage, and information coverage across our investigative team over the last six months." That is a different conversation.
A training record your section 151 officer and audit committee can actually use
An investigator's development does not happen only in simulation. Real interviews, team briefings, CPD events, on-the-job learning - these are where most development occurs. The Personal Development Log captures all of it alongside Elicit session scores, creating the complete evidence trail that audit and compliance require.
Officers log on-the-job training, not just simulator sessions
When an investigator conducts a housing fraud interview on Tuesday, they log it - what type, how long, and how confident they felt about specific aspects of their technique. That entry sits alongside their Elicit debrief scores in a single record. The platform captures the full picture of development, not just the hours spent in simulation.
Supervisors have visibility they currently do not have
A team leader can ask an officer how their training is going. With the PDL they can see it: simulator hours, real activity logged, confidence ratings across skills, and trends over time. If three investigators all rate themselves low on handling prepared suspects, that is a specific, addressable training need - not a vague impression.
The documented evidence your audit committee needs
Failure to Prevent Fraud compliance requires structured, measurable training evidence. Elicit's debrief produces the simulation evidence. The PDL produces the on-the-job evidence. Together they give your section 151 officer a complete, timestamped training record for every investigator - assembled automatically, not compiled from spreadsheets ahead of an inspection.
A model your finance team can forecast
Elicit is priced per seat per year to set your total hour pool - but your whole team then draws from that pool as a shared resource. No individual quotas, no per-session billing, and the cost is predictable from the first conversation.
Hours-based pooled contracts
Annual contracts are priced to set your total hour pool. Your whole team then draws from a single shared pool - no individual session limits, no per-person quotas. If two investigators run sessions simultaneously it draws from the same pool. Your finance team plans from a single predictable annual line item.
Quick-start pilots
A pilot gives your team a defined block of sessions with a controlled cohort before committing to full rollout. We work to get you from first conversation to first session quickly - no specialist hardware, no facilities to arrange, no lengthy setup process.
G-Cloud for scale procurement
Inquera will be listed on the G-Cloud Digital Marketplace. Any council can procure directly from the marketplace without running a further tender process. Full G-Cloud compliance documentation is available on request.
Simulation training that moves the needle
time
& PEACE
See Elicit with your scenarios
We run live demonstrations using the council enforcement scenarios, with avatars on.
Get in touch to arrange a session for your team.