Episode 8 Council House Crackdown

I'm Michelle Ackerley.

My parents both grew up on council estates

and as a family, we understand the difference

social housing can make to people's lives.

But across the UK, there's a chronic shortage

of council and housing association homes.

I know so many friends and so many people

that just literally don't have anywhere to live.

Adding to the crisis, some tenants are abusing the system,

holding on to properties they no longer need, or even worse -

unlawfully subletting them and coining in a small fortune.

Subletting social housing is wrong.

It's wrong. It's illegal and it's wrong.

So, every day, we'll be with the housing investigators

as they crack down on those rogue tenants...

-County Court bailiffs!

-DRILL WHIRS

..reclaim properties...

Anybody in?

..and give them to families in genuine need.

All of those keys are yours.

Aw, don't cos you'll start me off again.

This is Council House Crackdown.

Our reporter, property expert Luke Doonan,

also grew up on a council estate, and for the last six months,

he's been working alongside dedicated housing investigators

who will stop at nothing

to track down every single tenant who's abusing the system.

Today, the woman who unlawfully sublet

her two-bedroom flat in a £10,000 fraud

while she was in France.

This property was subletted.

-You could have been in this property years ago.

-That makes me angry.

We follow housing officers on the hunt for tenancy cheats.

We're from Circle Housing

and we're just here to do a tenancy audit.

Would you mind opening the door?

And we go to a flat in trendy East London

where an unlawful subletter was operating from an unlikely base -

behind bars.

-"Tell

-BLEEP

-he has to move out as he has not paid me a penny."

-Wow.

-Yeah.

Estimates suggest that at least 98,000

social housing properties in the UK

are occupied by someone who shouldn't be there.

It's difficult to be absolutely certain

about the full scale of the problem,

but with social housing in short supply,

tenancy fraud is without doubt a major issue.

All over the UK,

housing officers are pounding the streets and knocking on doors.

They're relying on a steady stream of tip-offs

from neighbours and others in the community

to help them flush out new leads on tenancy cheats.

It was one such eagle-eyed member of the community

that helped to lift the lid on our first case.

It concerns a woman who sublet her flat in South London

and made more than £10,000 while she was living in France,

Marie-Laure Badai.

The story came to light back in January 2015

with a report of a leak at one of the flats on this estate.

Luke is meeting up with Stefan Tavernier-Gustave,

who's been the housing officer responsible

for the Roupell Park council estate in Lambeth, South London,

for the last 12 years.

There's not much that goes on here that Stefan doesn't know about.

I'm a generic housing officer/youth coordinator.

The generic housing officer consists of dealing with leaseholders,

dealing with tenants, leaseholders and service charges,

rent arrears, normal allocations, which is home swaps.

Sounds like you're the go-to guy on the estate

for any kind of problems across the board, really.

Well, yeah, you could say that. Yeah, I'm the front line of staff,

so, yeah, they will come to me for any issues they may have

in terms of their housing management, really.

So, yeah, it is quite...

It's challenging for 140 units for one person, really, yeah.

-I bet. That's a lot.

-Yeah.

It was Stefan being in the right place at the right time

that led to the discovery of a huge tenancy fraud on his estate.

And Marie-Laure Badai was the woman at the centre of it.

Early last year, there was a water leak

from Miss Badai's property into the flat below.

In January, we had a leak reported

at one of our properties in this block.

Initially, the plumber went up there to the property,

felt there was something odd,

so, initially, first point of contact would be me

to go up to the property

and establish what is actually going on at that point.

I'm used to everybody in this estate.

I'm quite familiar by faces.

Not necessarily by names,

but by faces, I definitely can identify them.

So, you had an idea of who your tenant is,

-who should have been at the property.

-Absolutely, yeah.

And this is the property where the water leak was coming from.

So, this is the property that I attended.

We were expecting to find a middle-aged woman with two children.

She's been living here for over four years now.

During that time, Stefan hadn't seen any problems.

The only interaction we had with her

is when she actually came into the office

to report any housing management or any repairs she had,

but it was quite sporadic.

She was a fairly nice lady, very well spoken, very polite.

But when Stefan went to investigate the leak,

it wasn't the tenant who opened the door.

It was a woman Stefan had never seen before.

I saw a much younger lady.

She was quite surprised to see me

and I was really quite surprised to see her.

And she said, well,

her landlord said that she was going to be able to stay here.

So, for me, that rang alarm bells,

so I was like, "OK, well, she's not the landlord -

"she's a tenant, and we're the landlord -

"so we need to be asking you a bit more questions about that."

She told Stefan that she and her sister

were sharing a room in the flat

and there was someone else renting the other room.

In all, they were paying £1,200 a month to Miss Badai.

So, you hadn't had any reports about subletting or anything suspicious?

No, Luke, we never had any reports from anybody in this block

or any residents around the block about any subletting,

so we were none the wiser

until the report of the leak, really, to be honest.

For once, a leak proved actually really positive for you guys.

Absolutely. It gives us a little doorway, to be honest.

-It did indeed.

-Yeah.

With the legitimate tenant nowhere to be found,

Stefan passed the information on to

Lambeth housing fraud investigator Pam Esiso.

Pam is part of a team that, last year,

recovered 93 social housing properties

and uncovered tenancy fraud valued at £1.6 million.

Pam immediately got on the case and went to the flat.

She interviewed a male subtenant at the address,

who told her he had found the flat advertised on the internet.

They felt that it had gone through the normal channels,

gone through Gumtree, got the advert from Gumtree,

called up the person and were shown the property

and just rented a property, so they feel a bit hard done by.

The official tenant, on the other hand, was anything but.

She was paying only £500 a month to the council

and receiving around £1,200 from the subtenants.

Our tenant was making nearly £700 every month

from subletting the property.

Based on those figures,

the tenant could have already pocketed more than £10,000

in unlawful profits.

Pam's investigation has to be meticulous

so that the case is watertight if and when it has to go to court.

We're always very careful when carrying out our investigations

because one wrong move could potentially harm a case.

We have to look through the case notes,

almost like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Back in the office, Pam started looking into Badai's background.

The Prevention Of Social Housing Fraud Act,

which was introduced in 2013,

allows housing officials access to personal documents.

The Prevention Of Social Housing Fraud Act

has made it slightly easier

for us to get more information about tenants,

to be able to build a profile of where they've been,

what they've been doing, how they spend their money.

In this case, Pam wanted to crosscheck

what the tenant was spending with where she was supposed to be living.

The first thing I did was to carry out initial background checks.

This is a copy of the credit search.

This evidence helps highlight who lives in a property and who doesn't.

So, for people living in a property,

I would expect active credits in the property.

Things like their bank statements,

utility bills, like your gas and electricity,

phone bills, TV licence.

In this case, we hardly have anything on her,

which kind of points to the fact that she's not in the property.

Pam was confident the official tenant Miss Badai

was not living in the property, but was subletting.

But she still didn't know where Miss Badai was.

If you have your bank account and you have your cards

and you're in the UK, you spend on a daily basis.

You can go to Sainsbury's, you can go to,

you know, maybe the cinema, just shop around.

It leaves footprints for you.

But if you're abroad and you're just kind of exchanging money

or just withdrawing, that reflects as well.

The information suggested the tenant was actually living abroad.

I requested for bank statements

under the Prevention Of Social Housing Fraud

and the bank statements came back and sure enough, going back to 2008,

I was able to see activities on the bank account

were such that I believed that she was living outside the country.

Pam decided to check whether the tenant's children

attended school in the UK.

Close as we had to them being recorded in a school was in 2006

when one of them was just registered briefly

but never actually attended the school,

so that, again, looks like she probably never had

the intention of schooling the kids here in the UK.

Later, we'll find out what happens

when Pam discovers the official tenant living in France.

It's wrong to sublet a council property.

First of all, you're making money illegally.

Secondly, you're taking the opportunity

of someone that needs that place.

Subletting in that way is pretty disgusting.

I mean, you're gaining from a system

that's been put into place to help people.

I think people who are using it as an income

is a bit socially wrong because the whole point of it is

for people who are less fortunate to have a house.

And I think if they're stopping people who need housing

for their own profit is wrong and should not be allowed.

Obviously, the people who are subletting their flat

that was given to them by the council

don't really need it, obviously.

If they're doing that, they don't need it,

and so therefore the council needs to do something about it urgently.

Councils and housing associations are acutely aware

of the easy profits to be had from unlawful subletting.

Many have set up hotlines for tip-offs

from whistle-blowing neighbours.

And one housing association -

Havering in East London -

even went so far as to offer

a £500 reward for information

leading to a successful

fraud investigation.

A tip-off alerted council investigators

that a woman in Barnet was subletting her two-bedroom flat

to her daughter.

She had moved to Clacton-on-Sea to run a pub

while her daughter stayed on in her social housing flat.

The tenant was ordered

to return the keys

and pay costs of over £2,000.

The flat in Barnet was re-let

to a family from the housing list.

In the war against social housing cheats,

any information helps.

Sometimes, a tip-off from a neighbour

or a watchful eye from a caretaker

can be the beginning of an investigation

which returns a home to a person in need.

Sometimes, those tip-offs lead nowhere,

but they all need following up, as in this next case.

Primrose Hill - home to the stars

and one of the most fashionable and expensive

residential areas in London.

But nestled in these upmarket streets and surrounding area,

there are more than 1,000 social housing properties.

Meet fraud investigator Sherene Horne.

Sherene works for housing association Circle Housing

and Primrose Hill is her patch.

It's Sherene's job to make sure tenants aren't cheating the system

by subletting their properties and making a mint in the process.

Primrose Hill is a very sought-after area.

We have quite a lot of famous people living in the area,

some famous landmarks

and people can make quite a lot of money from rental incomes.

And with London property prices soaring,

there's a huge difference between social housing rents

and the private sector.

On a social rent, it's roughly about £145 a week for a one-bed flat,

but on the private market,

it would be about £375 to £400 a week.

Sherene has a whole network of people

that help her keep an eye on the properties she's responsible for,

from caretakers to other tenants.

If they notice something's not right, they tell Sherene,

and that's her cue to look into the tenancies.

Tip-offs that we receive from neighbouring residents

and the community are very important

because without those, we don't know what's going on.

Let's say, for example, the tip-offs that I've received today,

I wouldn't have had a clue

that there was possibly subletting going on at the property

without an anonymous tip-off from...I don't know who

cos it's anonymous.

So, we'll do a bit of investigation there,

do some door knocking.

Sherene's found there's no substitute for hitting the streets,

visiting properties and tenants unannounced.

We don't know what we're going to find when we knock the doors.

We could find the subtenants.

You know, on occasion, we've found the resident being there,

so that's always a good thing because then we're able to prove

that, actually, the resident is residing at the property

and we can close the case.

Um, but quite often, we find the subtenant's there

and unfortunately, a lot of the times,

we don't even get an answer.

So, hopefully, today, we'll be lucky and somebody will be there.

Sherene relies not just on tip-offs, but on people like Karen,

the caretaker responsible for these properties.

Karen is Sherene's eyes and ears on the ground.

Been a caretaker 35 years here at Primrose Hill.

Really enjoy the job,

but, lately, it's becoming quite tiresome

trying to find out who's the tenant of what flat

and who's not the tenant.

We're finding a lot of people subletting.

Karen's been a caretaker in this street for a very, very long time.

She knows the majority of residents, so she knows the comings and goings.

If there's anything strange happening,

she will always pick that up and let me know.

And today is one of those times.

She's heard that, in one of the properties,

instead of the official tenant,

there have been several people coming and going.

-Well, the tenant that was meant to be in

-BLEEP...

-Yeah.

-..is not the tenant that was known to the property.

-Right.

-There was a couple in there...

-OK.

..and now there's just all different people.

-And sometimes, there's no-one there at all.

-OK.

And you've mentioned the curtains.

-What did you notice about the curtains?

-They're never open.

-OK.

Sherene and Karen are always on the lookout for clues

which might indicate a property is being unlawfully sublet.

Where you've got communal areas, it's always good to check

what names are on the post to specific flats

cos that can give you an idea

as to whether a subtenant is in the property,

so that can give good evidence.

-No, there's none for

-BLEEP,

-so it looks like the person's...

-Someone's in.

-..taken it up.

Time to see if anyone's home.

SHE KNOCKS ON DOOR

-DOG BARKS

-That's the dog upstairs.

-OK.

SHE KNOCKS ON DOOR Karen is also concerned

contractors and decorators who need to work on the place

haven't been able to contact the tenant either.

They had trouble when they were doing the decorating, you know.

-All the specs to get new windows...

-Getting access.

-Could not get access for love nor money.

-OK.

They were ringing the mobile and someone said,

"Oh, we can't get anybody there yet."

That's a classic case of the contractors...

-Tenant not being there.

-..not able to get access.

They can't do a gas check in there to do the boiler.

Every rented property in the UK has to have a gas check every year

carried out by a qualified engineer.

It's a legal requirement,

so Sherene will be able to use that visit to check inside the flat.

So, what I'll do, then, is I will attend with the gas engineer

when we do get the appointment

and I'll carry out some system checks

to see if the resident's linked to another address.

And I'll also see who's on the electoral roll

and who's registered to pay council tax.

So, the door knock didn't seem to yield results.

It could be that there's no problem in that property

and all is well, but as Sherene was leaving,

a neighbour told her there were definitely new people in the flat.

There was no answer at the door to that property,

but on our way out of the building,

we did manage to bump into a neighbouring resident

who did confirm that, actually,

there's a different set of people in the property,

so that was really useful information

and means that I will definitely be investigating further.

Sherene's next tip-off is from Karen herself.

Neighbours say that they haven't seen

the official tenant for some time

and there appear to have been other people living there.

-Two concerns - the tenant has not been there for years.

-Right.

-There's been numerous tenants in there.

-Mm-hm.

-I knew of two Eastern European tenants...

-Mm-hm.

-..cos I thought he'd left and given up the flat...

-Yeah.

..and I found out he hadn't.

And then some of the tenants in there were saying

there was numerous other tenants.

The man who appears to be living at the property now

has come to Karen's attention because of a problem with his car.

The one we've got here now,

he's had issues with parking his car at the back,

-which isn't our property.

-OK.

That's how it's come to light that this guy is staying there.

Do you think we'll have any luck this morning?

-Well, his car's there, so...

-OK, well, let's go and have a look.

He'll not open the door. He'll look through the keyhole.

-All right.

-We can only but try.

-Yeah, so, let's give it a shot.

With the suspected subtenant's car parked outside,

it looks like someone's going to be in.

Let's give it a knock.

I can hear running water in there,

so we know there's somebody in there. There's movement.

So, somebody's just come to the peephole now.

Erm...

Hello? Circle 33. Would you mind opening the door?

A female voice inside says the official tenant is not at home

and Sherene should come back to do her tenancy audit later.

Yeah? OK.

They're not going to open the door or give any information,

so we'll just have to continue with our investigation.

So, that's another tenancy for Sherene to follow up

back at the office, but it's worth her while pursuing every tip-off

because there are so many people on the housing waiting list.

Subletting is a big problem in this area,

and in every area, really,

and I think because we're getting such a large demand

for social housing,

there's people that are cheating the system, which is so frustrating.

You know, that genuine people that have been on lists for years

are just hitting their head against a brick wall.

They're getting nowhere. No flats.

You know, half of them end up in hostels

and it's just, I think, very unfair.

-So, I do all my checks...

-Yeah.

-..check to see who's in the property

and let you know who's supposed to be there

-and you can keep an eye on things.

-I will do.

-OK.

-I'll see you when I see you.

-Yeah, take care.

-Bye.

-Bye, darling. Take care.

Sometimes, the door knocks may not appear successful,

but if somebody's there, even if they don't open the door,

they know that we're onto them.

And it's not good for our residents

to know that properties are being used fraudulently

and nothing's being done,

so we have to be actively taking action

against fraudulent tenancies.

Two months and many hours of investigations later,

Sherene has updates on the tip-offs she followed up in Primrose Hill.

The first flat she visited turned out to be all above board

and the official tenant is still living there.

But the second property visit,

where Sherene did get to speak to somebody inside,

has proved fruitful.

Following the audit that we carried out in Primrose Hill

where a young lady actually answered the door,

the tenant actually contacted us because he was infuriated

that we had actually gone round to his property,

wanted to know why we were there and all the rest of it.

Sherene brought the official tenant into the office.

I invited him in for an interview.

During the interview, I said, "Can we go back to the property?"

He agreed. He and his mother rushed off to the property.

They got there slightly ahead of myself and my colleague.

Sherene's investigative antennae were raised

as she was looking around the flat.

While my colleague was speaking with him,

I noticed there were a lot of clothes

neatly folded up throughout the property.

Something inside of me just said, "Pick up a pair of those jeans."

And when I picked up the jeans,

they were for somebody 5'5", and he's 6'5",

and all items of clothing in the property

were for somebody significantly smaller than him.

So, when I asked him, you know, "Whose clothes are these?"

he then started to say,

oh, his cousin stays here, his friend stays here.

Then his mum told us that, sometimes, he stays with her,

sometimes, he stays at his children's mother's property,

but, in fact, he told us that he didn't have any children.

His story did not stand up to scrutiny.

Not only that, but the tenant was in considerable rent arrears,

so now Sherene is seeking a possession order.

Now we're going to take possession of the property

because it's clear that he's not living there, basically.

Bang to rights.

You've been given a council house for a reason -

because you're on benefits or can't work

or can't support yourselves.

I think that it's outrageous that you are making a quick buck off it.

Something needs to be done about it.

I mean, I wouldn't envy the person who has to do the job,

but if there is...

If someone is in a place where they can sublet,

it means that they don't need the place.

I think there should be a lot more done to crack down on it

because there is so many people in dire need of it.

It's not fair, you know, to be making money on the side,

you know, if you don't need that property.

I disagree with a tenant subletting their home

and they've moved on to another apartment

cos then they're putting people at a disadvantage,

people who really need a council flat, such as my sister.

She's been in temporary accommodation for so long,

in one room, and she's got two little kids with her.

And she could be benefiting from a home that,

if it's empty and left to people who are in need of it.

In Brighton, a man secured a council property

after claiming to have a four-year-old son.

A number of years later, a contractor alerted the council

to the fact that he hadn't seen the occupant for two years,

rather a steady stream

of what he believed were students.

Checks revealed that the tenant had not only been receiving payments

into his bank account marked rent from various sources since 2012,

but also that he didn't, in fact, have a four-year-old son.

He had made a profit of over £3,000 through illegal subletting

and in 2014, he was found guilty of social housing fraud

by Brighton magistrates.

He was ordered to pay £5,600

in fines and costs.

Next, investigators reclaim a property

at the centre of an unlawful subletting operation

being masterminded from behind bars.

The man responsible was Michael Hollingsworth,

a convicted criminal serving a jail sentence

and at the same time, unlawfully subletting

this housing association one-bedroom flat

in East London's trendy Brick Lane for £900 a month.

Luke joins investigators at housing association One Housing

as they prepare to reclaim the flat, but the case isn't straightforward.

There's an innocent subtenant now facing the loss of her home.

Investigator Graham Littlewood is preparing for an eviction.

What we've got this morning is an eviction

at one of our tenant... Mr Hollingsworth's property.

We believe he is currently subletting the property

and that there's a subtenant still living there.

The case originally came to Graham's attention

when he got a phone call from another tenant

saying they'd seen someone moving in.

A tenant anonymously calls up

and said that he had bumped into a couple who were moving in.

They turned up with suitcases

and they mentioned to him that their fob didn't work

and they asked where they could get another fob.

Graham found that, according to their files,

no-one had moved into that flat recently.

In fact, they had a long-standing tenant there.

First, I went and looked on our system.

I could see that we haven't let that property out recently,

so, obviously, straightaway, there's a big, red flag there.

So, Graham began an investigation

to find out if anyone other than the official tenant

was listed at the property.

We ran some basic credit checks to see if the tenant had any credit,

to see if we could find anyone else

showing up with credit at the address.

That didn't...that didn't work. We went to utility companies.

Again, it was Mr Hollingsworth was the tenant's name

on all the utility bills.

The checks revealed nothing untoward.

All the bills linked to the tenant's flat were,

as you would expect, in the tenant's name.

But then a letter came into Graham's possession.

It was written to someone else in the block

and it was from the official tenant,

who was 160 miles away in Manchester Prison.

Another tenant in the block,

he'd been written to by Mr Hollingsworth from prison,

in actual fact.

And that's the first time that you find out

-that your legal tenant, as it were, is in prison?

-Yeah.

This is the letter.

What our tenant had said was that he wanted some help

with removing his belongings

and he asked his neighbour if he could help trace his subtenant

because he hadn't paid him much rent for a while.

-"Tell

-BLEEP

-he has to move out as soon as possible, please,

"as he has not paid me a penny."

So, he's blatantly admitting here

that he's got someone living in the property that he's not

because he's obviously in prison

-and he's getting some kind of money from them.

-Yeah.

That's pretty clear, isn't it, that he's...?

Yeah, yeah, as far as we're concerned,

-it's really good evidence that the property has been sublet.

-OK.

A tenant who's in prison

may be able to keep their social housing tenancy

if they can pay their rent while inside.

If the sentence is several years long,

the council or housing association may want to reallocate the property.

But the social housing authority

must be notified

of the change in circumstances.

So, next, Graham sent a fraud investigator to visit the property.

Our fraud investigator went round and tried to do some more visits

-and was successful in speaking to a person living in the property.

-OK.

Obtained a statement from them

saying that they were doing so with our tenant's consent.

So, straightaway, that's really good evidence.

So, the subtenant was living there

in the full knowledge of the official tenant,

and if that wasn't enough, the flat had been advertised online.

This was done online for a popular online advertisement website.

And this is that ad.

Just to read part of the ad, it says...

Sounds like a dream apartment, really, doesn't it,

in that location?

This is interesting.

"£900 per month with bills included."

If an official tenant is unlawfully subletting,

one of the tactics they commonly use

is to charge an all-in monthly rental that includes bills,

and that means if routine checks are carried out,

it will look as if the tenant is actually living there

and paying the bills.

Clever stuff, but not clever enough

to throw determined tenancy fraud investigators off the scent.

He's kept all the utilities in his name, so that if we run a check,

-it looks like no-one else is living there.

-Right, OK.

And to a tenant, £900 with all the bills looks like a good deal

cos then you've just got that one monthly payment.

Graham had all the evidence he needed.

The next step was to serve Michael Hollingsworth

with a notice to quit.

Normally, you would serve the notice at the address.

-Because he's in prison, we served it to him in prison.

-OK.

And what we asked him to do was to give the keys back

and to leave the property, which he agreed to do in April.

The only problem now is the flat isn't empty.

There's a subtenant still living there.

She told us, you know, she had a young child

in the property with her, unfortunately,

and she had another child on the way.

What we've advised her to do

is to go and make an application to a local authority.

She would have a priority need because she's got young children.

-Effectively, she's a victim here, isn't she?

-She is, yeah,

and it's obviously a difficult situation for us at that point

because we've got a young mum who's been caught up in this.

Housing officials have been granted a possession order for their flat

and will today carry out an eviction,

and the unfortunate subtenant will have to leave.

Well, the subtenant is going to have to leave the property today

if she's there.

She's been given notice, so she's had time enough there

to prepare to move their belongings and to move elsewhere.

This isn't as heartless as it sounds.

The idea is the subtenant applies for social housing in her own name

and uses the eviction notice as proof

that she needs somewhere to live.

But if she is still in the Brick Lane flat,

she will have to leave.

We'll be joining Luke and the eviction team later.

Subtenants in these situations

have no protection in the eyes of the law.

So, how do you avoid becoming an innocent victim

unwittingly caught up in an unlawful subletting fraud?

Firstly, always make sure you sign a tenancy agreement.

Secondly, be wary if your landlord asks you to pay your rent in cash.

And thirdly, make sure your deposit

is held in a government-authorised

deposit protection scheme.

The housing needs to be for the people who need it,

so anyone who's misusing that system

should have their housing taken away.

Lots of people have been turning a blind eye to stuff like this

and I think it's only where

the situation has got to a breaking point

where people are actually starting to crack down on stuff.

People who sort of sublet, to be quite truthful,

I can't really tell you on television

what I really think of them, but it should be stopped

and they should be penalised very, very heavily.

Earlier, we were on the trail of Marie-Laure Badai,

a woman who has made thousands

from unlawfully subletting her council flat

on the Roupell Estate in South London.

Lambeth's housing investigator Pam Esiso

has already discovered that the two-bedroom flat

is being sublet to three people -

one man and two women who are sisters.

I requested bank statements

and the activities on the account were such

that I believed that she was living outside the country.

Pam wasn't giving up.

She decided to pay the subtenants another visit.

Last time she went, she met a male subtenant.

This time when she arrived, the two sisters were at home.

They told Pam that they'd found the flat online

and that Miss Badai had come from France to show them around.

The subtenant said she saw the advert on Gumtree

and phoned up the tenant.

She actually confirmed that the tenant came from France

to meet up with her and she was quite keen to stress

that the tenant said, "Oh, I've only just come from France

"to meet up with you and show you the property."

This was the confirmation Pam needed

the tenant was, in fact, living in France

and enjoying a lifestyle which may have been financed, in part,

by subletting her council flat.

The subtenants gave Pam contact numbers for the tenant.

Someone who identified herself as the tenant answered the phone

and as soon as I introduced myself, oh, she just said,

"Oh, I don't know who you're talking about"

and the conversation ended.

Despite the tenant's denial, Pam had all the evidence she needed

to get the property back and end the fraud.

She mobilised her colleague Stefan to serve the notice to quit.

This was passed on to Stefan, who served notices on the property,

so we're currently in the process of taking legal action.

In January this year,

almost 12 months after the case first came to light,

the courts granted Lambeth Council outright possession.

The subtenants were evicted and the flat repossessed from Miss Badai.

Now it's been redecorated and it's ready for a new family to move in.

We got the property back, which has been almost a year now,

and it's been worth it because it's a nice property,

it's done up and this one's going to be allocated

to the people that need it or are in need of social housing.

Five families from the housing waiting list

are invited to view the flat.

-Feel free to look around.

-Right.

-Yeah, take your time. Yeah.

-Just ask me any questions you need, OK?

-OK.

-All right?

Catherine O'Grady, who's on the top of the list, snaps it up.

-Obviously, I'm interested.

-Yeah.

-Quite happy.

OK, I'm going to give you the details.

Catherine has been on the housing waiting list for seven years.

The property I'm in now is private rented.

My landlord has been very difficult from day one.

As that cold weather we had just a little while back,

my whole boiler popped and water was running out

and it took them over a week -

and I've got two very young kids, and sick kids as well -

over a week to get my heating back and my hot water.

So, now my two kids are going to have,

like, a nice, happy, family home now,

so I'm over the moon. Over the moon.

This property was subletted.

-You could have been in this property years ago.

-That makes me angry.

The first person that has accepted it,

she's happy with the property, which makes me happy

because now we can give it to somebody

that's suitable to the property.

This lady has now been given something

that they should have had a long time ago.

There's people like me with young kids

that have been struggling from 2008, and we're now, what, 2016,

and there's people that are renting these places,

making their money when there's people like myself

that could do with these places, that are in desperate need of them,

and there's people taking them out of the system.

I just think it's disgraceful, to be honest with you.

So, I'm glad that they're finally cracking down

on situations like this.

It's great. It's a great feeling to know that, really,

that she's got what she needs.

-Job done.

-HE CHUCKLES

There's people desperate for housing,

so they're just making it worse by subletting them

and obviously making a profit out of it.

There is a lot of people, unfortunately, misusing it.

I hear lots of stories of subletting and things like that,

which is quite sad because the people that are subletting

obviously can afford to, but then, in the meantime,

there's families going without places to live.

There's a huge, huge, huge issue

with homeless people in Sheffield at the minute that I've noticed

and you think, like, if the social housing is there,

then why are these people not being helped?

And then you think there's people abusing and exploiting the system.

If you've got social housing of any sort

because you're a person that needs that,

then you shouldn't sublet it for a big profit for yourself.

In Ealing, West London,

a woman was given a two-bedroom council flat

after producing false documents and using a false ID

to prove she'd been made homeless by her landlady.

In reality, she owned her own home and continued to live there

as she sublet her council property

in a fraud that spanned 18 years

and netted her over £90,000.

In 2010, she was sentenced to a year in prison,

ordered to pay over £80,000 in costs and compensation

and handed a confiscation order

of £290,000.

Earlier, we uncovered the case of Michael Hollingsworth,

who was supervising the unlawful sublet of his flat from behind bars.

The flat is in Brick Lane -

with its markets, galleries and restaurants,

one of the most vibrant areas of East London and very lucrative.

Hollingsworth had advertised the one-bedroom flat for £900 a month.

Today, Luke joins Graham Littlewood from One Housing,

who is due to repossess the flat.

But there is one problem - the subtenant, a young mother,

may still be in the flat.

You've got an entrance here and one block that leads here and here

and then that communal door in the corner

has flats in that corner and that corner.

And the flat is up here and it looks out

onto Old Montague Street.

The eviction team has arrived,

including the bailiffs and a locksmith.

After you guys.

They wish to remain anonymous.

So, we're just outside the property. It's ten o'clock in the morning.

The bailiff's going to knock to see if the subtenant is in.

Hello? County Court bailiffs!

HE KNOCKS ON DOOR

Mr Locksmith, do your business.

As there's no answer, the locksmith has to drill out the locks.

DRILL WHIRS

Do you have any idea what kind of condition the property's in?

I don't. I've not been into the property before.

DRILL WHIRS

Breaking in without damaging the door is a lengthy process.

I'm quite surprised that, as a housing association,

-you don't actually hold keys.

-We can't hold keys.

You have, legally, what's called

the right to exclusive possession of your property.

That means that, once we let it to you, legally, it's yours.

You can keep out anyone, even your landlord.

DRILL WHIRS

Finally, they're in.

-There we go.

-Hello? Bailiffs!

The bailiffs have just gone inside.

They're just going to check that the property's safe and secure.

There's no-one at home.

The subtenant seems to have moved out.

So, Graham, we now have access.

-That took a little while to get in, didn't it?

-It did, yeah.

-So, let's go. Is this the...?

-This looks like the bedroom.

-OK.

-It looks in pretty good condition.

Obviously, there's a bit of rubbish around.

-A few bits and pieces and kids toys.

-Sure.

But it doesn't look in bad condition, actually.

It looks like someone's left pretty damn quick.

Someone's left in a hurry. They've not taken everything.

-They've left a few bits and pieces.

-You're pretty sure she's left?

I mean, just having a quick look around,

you just get that feeling from there's not many pots and plates

and things outside. You know, if you've got a couple of young kids,

you'd expect just the usual, everyday items for living, you know.

Mugs, etc.

I've not had a look in the fridge, but there's a few bits and pieces.

-That's pretty gross.

-That's not a great smell.

On the basis of the smell coming out of that fridge,

I imagine she's left... You know, the power's been off.

I imagine she's been gone for a couple of weeks,

looking at the state of the flat.

The tenant and subtenant now have 28 days to remove any belongings.

Once we've cleared out the property, our voids team will come in here,

we'll look at any works that need doing,

any decorations that might need doing.

It'll be cleaned and then we'll get it back out and get it let.

The flat has now officially been repossessed

and is signed back to One Housing.

How long will it be before you can give this

to someone who's in genuine need who's on the housing list?

So, viewings, hopefully, within the next two, two and a half weeks.

-That's really quick.

-Yeah, it's really quick.

They've got a long waiting list. They want to get people in.

So, it's been a successful day for Graham and his team.

So, you must be incredibly relieved to have those keys back.

Yeah, absolutely. These are going to go to someone really deserving.

It's been a fantastic day.

We couldn't be happier with the result

-and the way it's gone.

-Brilliant.

Even better news comes through -

that the subtenant has been rehoused by a neighbouring local authority,

and since then, someone from the housing list

has moved into Brick Lane, so it's good news all round.

It's not just housing investigators

winning the war against tenancy fraud.

There's an army of neighbours, caretakers and contractors

helping to root out tenancy cheats

and give social housing back to those who really need it.