POLICE were called in after council whistle- blowers shopped their colleagues.

More than 60 whistleblowers pointed the finger last year.

According to a Freedom of Information request, 63 cases of whistleblowing of Glasgow City Council officers and staff were investigated in 2013, up on 59 in 2012 and 33 in 2011.

Of the allegations in 2013, nine were upheld. All involved council staff, not officers.

Three people resigned, two were sacked and three were given a written warning.

The other person was given a reminder about council procedures. Three also resulted in a police investigation.

Of the total number of calls received, four were allegations of abuse of power, 13 were theft allegations, around a third concerned service complaints, 10 were allegations of misuse of council equipment, such as cars and computers, 13 were logged as working-time abuse, seven were about houses of multiple occupation, and four were planning or licensing matters.

A council spokesman said the 2013 figures had been slightly inflated by calls wrongly directed to the whistleblowing service from members of the public complaining about council services, not necessarily allegations about staff.

He said more than one call could also be made about a particular case.

The spokesman said the council wanted to encourage members of staff or public to report concerns and had launched a whistleblowing hotline several years ago.

He said: "The council encourages anyone with concerns about corruption, fraud or any other wrongdoing to make responsible use of its whistleblowing facilities, which include a dedicated telephone line and online reporting forms.

"Numbers fluctuate quite a lot - and even to the extent that reporting them by financial year, as we normally would, shows a different trend to reporting by calendar year, which the Freedom of Information request asked for.

"The rise is down to misdirected complaints about the quality of services.

"There was no similar rise in substantiated cases."

In 2012, 10 cases were upheld, and half the employees were sacked.

In the previous year, 12 cases were upheld and three people were dismissed. The remainder were given verbal and written warnings.

Two years ago, the Evening Times revealed nearly 150 council workers had been investigated for fraud in five years, with more than two a month successfully prosecuted over the same time.

Investigations were carried out by Glasgow's specialist benefit counter fraud team.

Of 143 cases investigated, only nine of the workers were cleared. h

The other 134 cases saw either the worker or their partner convicted of fraud.

victoria.brenan@eveningtimes.co.uk