This was a supporting detail page of the main policy document.
Recent research by the Audit Commission suggests around 100,000 social homes in England could be unlawfully occupied. With approximately 1.7 million households on the waiting list for social housing and around another 250,000 social households officially classed as overcrowded, social housing fraud needs to be stopped. Many social landlords are increasing their efforts to stop fraud in their housing stock. As a result more social homes have been recovered for their proper use. While this progress is encouraging, the government wants to see more done to stop fraud. We ran a consultation between January and April 2012 and supported the ‘Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Bill’ that received Royal Assent on 31 January 2013. The new Act, that came into force in October 2013, includes:
new criminal offences of sub-letting, with a maximum sentence of 2 years’ imprisonment and an unlimited fine
power for the courts to give social landlords any profit the tenant has made from sub-letting
More powers for local authorities to investigate social tenancy fraud through better access to data from banks, building societies, telecomms companies and utility companies came into force on 6 April 2014. Local authorities receiving social housing fraud funding 2013 to 2015