A spotlight on Tenancy Fraud

What is Tenancy Fraud?
Tenancy Fraud is when someone wrongfully accesses, or allows someone else access, to their social housing property. This is a crime.
The most common form of Tenancy Fraud is illegal subletting where tenants let someone else live in their home – this is estimated to make up 90% of all cases. Other examples include:
- Unlawful Occupation where someone seeks to occupy a property without consent of the tenant
- Obtaining a property by deception or fraud
- Lying about housing need to be assigned a greater priority for housing
- Succession and assignment fraud – misrepresenting circumstances to meet the legal criteria in place to succeed to a tenancy previously held by another family member
- Being paid to pass on keys to a property
- Right to Buy/Acquire – falsely claiming the Right to Buy/Acquire and associated discounts because of misrepresenting who lives in the property
- Not using the property as the only or main home
- Not notifying when the tenant dies or moves out
Why is Tenancy Fraud a problem?
The demand for housing is higher than the number of homes available, and at present waiting lists are the highest they’ve been in over a decade. When someone abuses the system by committing Tenancy Fraud, they are illegally living in a home that should be going to someone else.
An estimated 148,000 homes are being lived in by people who shouldn’t be there, and the cost of providing accommodation to homeless people is high.
It’s estimated that the act of Tenancy Fraud costs housing providers like us around £1 billion per year – this includes the financial losses and the cost for us to investigate cases. The cost of one single property committing Tenancy Fraud has been calculated as anything from £18,000 up to £94,000. When our costs are already high, and the need for housing is so great, this has a real impact what we can deliver for our residents.
What can be done to tackle Tenancy Fraud?
if we suspect Tenancy Fraud in one of our homes, we start an investigation to find out what is going on. We will work with agencies including but not limited to the Police, Local Authorities and the Department of Work and Pensions to investigate the matter.
While we monitor and investigate suspicious tenancies in our properties, it’s important that neighbours and communities stay vigilant. You might see unfamiliar people coming and going from a property, unusual activity such as leaving and arriving with lots of bags, new people living there and changing frequently.
How to report it
0344 7360066
Or write to us, find details of your nearest housing office here: https://www.regenda.org.uk/our-offices