Tenancy fraud robs 50,000 families of social housing
Councils are not doing enough to bring 50,000 social homes that are unlawfully sublet back into use, according to the government’s public spending watchdog.
In a report on fighting local government fraud, Protecting the public purse, the Audit Commission says that whilst local authorities have made progress against fraud in recent years, housing tenancy fraud ‘has not been adequately addressed’.
It says the problem is reducing the availability of social housing in England by 50,000 homes, and stresses this is a conservative estimate. The watchdog also says councils should be doing more to tackle housing benefit fraud.
The report says fraud is likely to increase during a recession, and recommends that councils should reassess their fraud prevention measures accordingly. In particular it suggests ensuring that they are doing all they can to tackle tenancy fraud, and making sure housing benefit fraud measures are up to date.
The commission also recommends that the government work with the Audit Commission to ascertain the extent of housing tenancy fraud. And it says it will undertake research to establish the scale of the problem, and produce guidance for councils on how to tackle it.
But Margaret Eaton, chair of the Local Government Association, said: ‘Councils are dedicated to bearing down on cheats to keep council tax as low as possible for the vast majority of honest, hard-working tax payers.’
Housing minister John Healey announced details of a government crack down on unlawful subletting at the end of July. This includes a data sweep of housing and benefit records, and new advice for housing associations and councils on how to tackle tenancy fraud. It is intended to free up between 5,000 and 10,000 homes.
The Communities and Local Government department is offering councils grants of up to £50,000 to work with housing associations to tackle tenancy fraud. It is also offering large associations cash to participate in a data matching exercise run by the commission, called the National Fraud Initiative.
For more on the government initiative see All eyes on tenancy fraud
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Readers' comments (36)
worried well | 15/09/2009 9:11 am
Oh give it a rest Audit Commission.
When an organisation has been created to check, all it can do is come up with more audit and checking, without being able to understand that it is partly responsible in the first place. In the name of efficiency it pushed shared services and outsourcing and turned our neighbourhoods into places where transactions happened instead of relationships that were being built. What happened was a loss of local knowledge and intelligence. And now they want local authorities to create more teams that spend their days checking to compensate for all of the lost knowledge.
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kass | 15/09/2009 11:10 am
aburke | Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:11 GMT....
The only responsible for this situation are the landlords themselves which let it develop and depriving their residents in needs of homes. the first thing to be done would be to fine these lanlords for having not been able to tackle this situation and putting and remedy in the hands of a governemnt agency indipendent from landlords.
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Harry Lime | 15/09/2009 12:13 pm
It's incredibly simplistic to believe this can be simply tackled. It would require the landlords being given far more resources which ultimately would have to be taken through higher rents. As a Housing Manager I was responsible for aprox 800 units. This meant you had to maange reactively and by exception, therefore if you weren't in arrears, involved with, or a victim, of ASB I would be unlikely to know much about you. Unless those subletting allow their rent accounts to run ito arrears or cause ASB there's every chance they'll go undetected for a long time. Do you really think neighbours would "blow the whistle" if the people living there are decent neighbours? and risk a nightmare resident moving in there instead? I applaud the concept, but fail to see how it'll work.
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Bernard Townroe | 15/09/2009 12:48 pm
I just wonder where those who are living in these 50,000 council homes will end up should they ever be turfed out. They might be occupying them through an illegal sub-letting arrangement, for instance, but does it follow that they are not in need of accommodation themselves? It just looks like another facile line of reasoning - 50,000 homes allocated inappropriately, ergo they have no legitimate housing need so 50,000 of the 64,000 in temporary accommodation can move right in - swapping their accommodation with those in the council stock, no doubt!
It's the same simplistic nonsense as the empty homes argument. There are empty homes so why can't people without a permanent home move right in? Sounds straightforward but anyone who's ever tried to manage an empty homes scheme knows the truth of the matter! With no account taken of condition, type, location, demand, demographics, access to employment, etc., it's just not that simple. Oh and the vast majority are owned privately, so short of the state taking over large amounts of private property, I'm not sure how it'd work.
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kass | 15/09/2009 2:51 pm
Harry Lime | Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:13 GMT...
All you had to do to was to carry year by year periodic blitz checks to identify who is living in each property...
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Harry Lime | 15/09/2009 3:26 pm
Kass, the naivety of that comment illustrates my point about people taking things at a very simplistic level. Landlords and repairmen struggle like hell to get into many properties for gas safety checks, routine repairs and the like. If people don't want to allow you into their home you can't barge your way in, you don't have the legal right to. If I was illegally subletting I'd simply refuse access until such a time that was convenient for me and was known in advance - and then just ensure the "real" occupier was there for that meeting - what would you do to combat that?
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kass | 15/09/2009 4:17 pm
Harry Lime | Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:26 GMT...
As I said in my first posting, this checking should be devolved to an independent agency, with powers to carry out checks without warning given... If landlo0rds do not know how to go about it or are impeded in any way they have the repsonsibility to publicly give up or propose alternatives or to say we cannot just do it or refuse to do it or whatever. What they cannot do is what they have done to let it go on on on giving everybody else the impression that they were in control. I think they should be fined for that alone.
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Harry Lime | 15/09/2009 4:29 pm
Kass what you're proposing about passing it on to someone who would have the "right" to carry out checks without any notice would be most ambulance chasing "human rights" lawyers wet dream, as the case would end up in Brussels without delay as I would expect that to contravene the act. The powers don't currently exist (to my knowledge) so this would just to be another attempt by yourself to bash RSL's generally. Yes a (small) proportion of this may be down to the RSL's lack of action, but ultimately they're tackling this with one arm tied behind their back. Also any such "fines" if levied would have to be found from where? My money's on the tenants.....
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Melvin Bone | 15/09/2009 4:40 pm
A tenant levy sounds like a cracking idea. That way this 'independant agency' that has the power to enter any tenants house at any time could be properly equipped as I am sure many tenants would resist a forced entry to their 'home'.
Probably the most naive idea I have seen posted here to date.
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worried well | 15/09/2009 5:19 pm
which takes us back to the original point. Local knowledge built upon personal relationships. Funnily enough however, the frontline staff were cut to save money in organisations that received audit commission stars. How does that work out?
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