Almost £1 million of tenancy fraud stopped in Wolverhampton

Wolverhampton Council's audit and risk committee was told almost 20 cases were stopped, worth £1,031,320, from April 2021 to March last year.

The notional figures for tenancy fraud are based on methodology and calculations provided by the Cabinet Office to back the National Fraud Initiative.

Eight cases of social housing application fraud worth £25,920 were stopped, with offers withdrawn and/or applicants excluded from the waiting list.

A further case of tenancy subletting – illegal subletting of properties which were recovered – was stopped, with £93,000 saved, a report to chiefs said.

The document said: "A notional £93,000 per property recovered based on average four year fraudulent tenancy and an estimate of the duration that the fraud may have continued undetected.

"This includes temporary accommodation for genuine applicants; legal costs to recover property; re-let cost; and rent foregone during the void period between tenancies."

Meanwhile, four cases worth £372,000 were stopped where an applicant was prevented from obtaining a tenancy they were not entitled to. Two cases worth £168,400 of right to buy fraud were stopped, with a further four cases of non-occupation – people not using the property as a residence – costing £372,000.

Mark Wilkes, audit business partner, told councillors there was "no particular reason" why levels of tenancy fraud seemed to be on the up and said they were at expected levels.

He said: "With the cases coming through, obviously they come through randomly as they are identified. There will have been a bit of an increase because the sub-letting cases are the more complicated ones to investigate, there's a lot more background work that needs to be done and built up to form a proper case. There was also the impact of Covid whereby a lot of recovery action was not allowable and investigations could not take place."