Fraud drive recovers 97 sub-let homes
A government anti-fraud drive helped to recover 97 unlawfully sublet social homes in 2008/09.
The number of homes recovered through the National Fraud Initiative is up on 69 the previous year, but accounts for only a tiny fraction of the 50,000 homes the Audit Commission estimates are unlawfully sub let.
The Labour government launched a crack down on unlawful subletting in July last year, with the aim of recovering between 5,000 and 10,000 homes, but the NFI report only covers the period up to the beginning of April 2009.
The initiative is run by the Audit Commission and supplies councils with information on possible frauds and overpayments, which it produces by matching different sets of data.
Overall it helped trace £215 million of overpayments in 2008/09, up from £140 million the previous year.
On housing benefit, the NFI says it identified £32.3 million of overpayments up from £23.61 million in 2007/08.
It also helped to uncover 16 cases where the right to buy had been wrongfully awarded, down on 105 the previous year.
The NFI recommends housing associations should take part in its future initiatives to tackle fraud, and should be encouraged to do so by regulator the Tenant Services Authority.
Case study: Jephson Housing Association
Data matching of housing information revealed that a person held two separate tenancies at the same time with different social landlords. Follow up found the tenant was not living at one of the properties and had been sub-letting the house for some time to another person. An eviction order has now been granted to remove the person unlawfully occupying the house.
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Readers' comments (4)
Harry Lime | 24/05/2010 9:43 am
OK, it's "only" 97 properties, but it's better than nothing. In this era of "efficiencies" there should be a far more joined up approach to information sharing with RSL's. A classic one would be for ASB, it's a farce that currently people can present themselves to often neighbouring authorities and claim they've been "living with family" for the past few years, when in fact they've been evicted for ASB and often the new authority has no way of checking. All tenants should be on some sort of national register, ideally through National Insurance numbers.
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Anonymous | 24/05/2010 10:17 am
97 against 50,000? AC needs to explain what evidence they used to come with 50,000 sublets?
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Anonymous | 24/05/2010 11:28 am
Is there a flaw in the methodology of the Audit Commission figures regarding the number of homes sub-let? If the true figure is 50,000 homes then the National Fraud Initiative is either not doing a very good job in tracking down all these sub-let properties with 69 and 97 properties identified in the past couple of years. Or the figures are incorrect in the first place and been driven by the dogma of some sections of the popular press.
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Anonymous | 24/05/2010 1:33 pm
Most subletting is detected outside of the national fraud initiative which is a data matching exercise. This is not an accurate picture of the level of detected subletting. Many Almos and LAs (although it varies from borough to borough) recover a large number of properties annually. For example, the Almo I work for recovers 90-100 tenancies annually which have been sublet, not occupied as the tenant's principal home or were fraudulently obtained, and have done so regularly for over a decade. We are now working with RSLs to improve their performance. Good detection and recovery action takes time.
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