Episode 9 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.

..reclaim properties...

-Anybody in?

-..and give them to families in genuine need.

All of those keys are yours.

Oh! 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 long-standing tenant who turned out to be cheating the system,

pocketing thousands whilst living on the other side of the world.

I wouldn't cancel my cards or end all my accounts

if I was intending to come back in about five months.

The flat in east London for rent on a holiday lets website,

at four times its actual cost.

It was advertised for either £80 a night,

£500 a week or £1,600 a month.

Now, the social rent is only £400 a month.

And how a reclaimed property finally means some space for one family

who've been crammed into a one-bedroom flat.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-I'm so happy to have my own bedroom.

Yes.

Rising property prices

mean fewer people are buying and more are renting.

The rise in demand for property to let

is pushing up private rental costs.

With private rentals now so expensive,

the demand for social housing is huge,

nowhere more so than here in London.

Here in the capital,

the average private rental costs £1,350 per month.

Pressure on social housing has never been higher,

and with waiting lists of up to 11 years,

it's crucial that social housing stock

is allocated to people who really need it.

Our first story concerns a woman

who was not only subletting her housing association property

but was making a small fortune from it

while she had relocated to South America.

This two-bed flat in Hackney, east London,

should have been home to a social housing tenant

for the last 20 years.

But instead of Hackney,

the tenant had actually gone back to live in her home country,

Colombia in South America.

It was only when neighbours spotted another family coming and going

that suspicions were raised.

An anonymous tip-off

that the official tenant's flat was being unlawfully sublet

was followed up by a visit to the property,

where housing officers expecting to find the tenant

were greeted, instead, by a family from Spain.

Luke's meeting housing officer Emmanuel Akinde,

who handled the case.

Was there any evidence

of your original tenant being there, then, at this point?

I asked one of the neighbourhood managers to visit

-and just do a quick knock.

-Uh-huh.

There was no-one present at that point in time,

so they left their card asking for a call back.

-Right.

-What we then got was Miss

-BLEEP

-who rang in from Colombia.

Wow. How did you know she was calling from Colombia?

Well, our customer care line operatives now log every single call

that comes in to Family Mosaic and, on this occasion,

the country code really showed that the call

was coming in from Colombia,

and that's really when things started to pick up for us.

OK. So it sounds like she's either on a very long holiday...

-Exactly.

-Lucky her. ..or she's actually not living in the UK.

Exactly.

Of course, it was possible the official tenant was just on holiday

in Colombia and planned to come back.

But when Emmanuel did more checks,

he found that the official tenant and her husband

had started to settle their outstanding loans

and close down their UK bank accounts,

which only added to Emmanuel's concern.

We looked into his credit account and we looked into hers as well.

It showed that approximately around 2010, 2011,

they started to settle all their accounts.

-OK.

-The utilities, so the gas and electricity.

-Let's have a look.

-The last gas was ended around 2011.

-Oh, wow.

-Exactly.

That's really detailed information, isn't it?

Exactly. Really shows everything.

You can see the credit card that they had, also settled.

You can see accounts that they maintained previously.

-Everything else was emptied.

-Zero balance.

Yeah, I wouldn't cancel my cards or end all my accounts

if I was intending to come back in about five months.

With suspicions raised

that the official tenant was no longer in the country,

investigations focused on exactly who was living

in her allocated flat.

A door knock had found a Spanish family currently in residence,

who claimed to have been living there

and paying rent to the official tenant for two years.

So investigators began credit checks

which proved that the subtenants were telling the truth.

You can see here,

it lists when individuals move from one property to another.

-So you've got Mr

-BLEEP.

-Yeah. Previous address.

Exactly. Previous address in 2012.

-Uh-huh.

-And when he moved from there in...

-Or when he notified his bank that he was leaving...

-Oh, wow.

And when he started, he told them he was moving to our property.

So that's also recorded.

Any conversation that you have with your financial institution,

-so banks, utility companies...

-Yeah.

-All recorded.

And that showed that he moved...

what day he moved from his property in Brixton,

and that's when he moved into ours in Wayland Avenue.

This is absolutely watertight.

-It really shows when Mr

-BLEEP

-moved into the property.

I guess no-one could argue with that.

-It's paper clear, isn't it?

-No.

The documents clearly showed that the subtenant

had started living in the flat in 1995.

And as Emmanuel dug deeper, he discovered that the subtenant

had been using the official tenant's rent card

to pay rent to the housing association.

Housing association Family Mosaic

use personalised plastic swipe cards,

which can be used to pay rent

at any post office or council payment office.

While the rent card does contain the name

of the property's official tenant and the address,

it doesn't have a photo ID.

The use of the rent card suggested

that the subtenants could have been colluding with the official tenant.

With Emmanuel asking more and more searching questions,

the subtenants decided to assist him.

They handed over bank statements

which showed several payments of rent

directly to the official tenant in Colombia,

and other amounts directly to the housing association

using the official rent card.

So, this is the subtenant paying your tenant rent.

Exactly, making regular payments through his bank account...

-OK.

-..into the Colombian bank account.

Oh, I see. So, not only are they paying...

They're paying the rent...

Yeah. They were using the rent card to make some payments on behalf

-of the

-BLEEP

-while they were out of the country.

-Right.

-Then the rest of the payment they were making directly to the

-BLEEP.

So the subtenants were paying the housing association's rent

via the rent card and topping up payments directly into

the bank accounts of the official tenant in South America.

It was all Emmanuel needed to confront this tenancy cheat.

Later, we find out how the tenancy cheat and her partner reacted

once they'd been confronted by the housing association.

They tried to have the utilities in the property turned off.

That's outrageous. So, he's got someone living in the property

and he's trying to turn off the utilities

so they have no gas, electricity...

And there's a happy ending

for one man waiting on Hackney's housing list.

It's big, it's spacious, nice area.

Yeah. Lived in Hackney my whole life. I'm pretty happy.

Local authorities all over the UK are losing money to tenancy cheats.

It's estimated that housing tenancy fraud,

including illegally subletting

and not using a property as a main address,

costs the public purse £1.8 billion every single year.

That's five times the annual loss from housing benefit fraud.

The system nationwide is hugely stretched.

Yeah, people aren't being provided the service that they need.

The governments for the last 30 years

haven't spent any money on building social housing.

They seem to think it's a bad thing, and it's a good thing.

Both Labour and Conservative governments.

It's basically a landlord's market right now,

and making sure that there's enough housing available

at affordable prices is what's going to be crucial.

A shortage of affordable housing in London

means that many public sector employers

are struggling to recruit key workers on moderate incomes,

such as nurses and teachers.

Several councils and housing associations

operate key worker schemes, which offer new-build homes to rent

at 80% or less of the typical market value.

But these schemes are in high demand and often have long waiting lists,

making affording somewhere to live in the city

a desperate struggle for many of those

working in schools, hospitals and other vital services.

In this next case, we hear how one unscrupulous council tenant

sublet her flat to an unknowing NHS employee,

who then found herself unwittingly caught up

in a tenancy fraud investigation.

In 2001, Elizabeth Agboola moved into this one-bedroom flat

in the historic area of Woolwich, south-east London.

But it wasn't until 11 years later

that alarm bells started ringing over the tenancy,

when the local council did some research on their tenants.

Nigel Brown, anti-fraud manager at the Royal Borough of Greenwich,

has been investigating the case.

In April 2012, the council undertook a proactive exercise

whereby we searched our tenants' names against credit profiles.

Basically, what this means

is that we see and identify whether our tenants

are still currently actively resident at their council tenancies.

Miss Agboola's name came up because it appeared that she had no credit

held at the council tenancy but that she had, since at least 2006,

a lot of financial links to an address in Dagenham,

including a mortgage.

It turned out Elizabeth Agboola, along with her husband,

had owned the house in Dagenham since 2006

and had a joint mortgage against the property.

Both were registered to pay council tax there,

and all Miss Agboola's financial accounts

were also linked to the address.

It didn't look like the official tenant was living at her allocated

social housing flat in Woolwich which, if true,

would be a breach of her tenancy agreement at the very least.

And if Miss Agboola was living in Dagenham, who, if anyone,

was living in her council flat back in Woolwich?

It was time to make an unannounced visit.

We surprised the lady, but when she opened the door,

she told us she was the tenant there

but that Miss Agboola was her landlord -

openly said that she'd been living there for the last eight months.

When asked how she came about the property, to get it for rent,

she indicated that she'd gone to a local newsagent,

seen a card in the window, and had seen it advertised for £550 a month.

The woman who answered the door was an NHS employee

and had been completely unaware that the flat was a council property.

So, being an NHS worker, as this tenant is,

she thought that would be ideal for London, be ideal to commute,

and she took up the tenancy and met Miss Agboola at the property,

paid her a deposit and then took on the tenancy from there from her,

not knowing at all that the property was actually belonging to us

and not to Miss Agboola.

Housing officers quickly realised

the subtenant was an unwitting participant in a tenancy fraud.

The lady was very shocked.

I think she was more concerned about the fact

she's now got to go on the hunt for another property.

But she realised that now must happen.

She knew that, now that it was a council property,

she would have to give that back and move away.

It was a very clear case of subletting,

you know, for quite a long period of time.

Further checks on Miss Agboola's tenancy

revealed that she'd run up rent arrears of more than £4,000.

Not only was she charging the nurse over the odds to rent the house -

£550 instead of the £358 council rent -

but she wasn't even keeping up rental payments to the council.

Another department of Greenwich Council

were already pursuing Miss Agboola for the rent arrears.

We found that Miss Agboola hadn't actually paid her own rent

to the Royal Borough of Greenwich for her council flat,

and she was now in some serious arrears.

So the council, aside of what we were doing

in relation to the subletting issue,

was already running the court, the county court, for rent arrears.

The Royal Borough of Greenwich was granted a possession order,

ended the tenancy and reclaimed the flat.

Unfortunately, that meant the NHS worker had to move out.

It wasn't too long after

that the subletter found herself to be evicted anyway,

because the rent hadn't been paid by Miss Agboola.

Luckily, she's now found accommodation.

Even though they now had the flat back

and were preparing to allocate it to someone off the waiting list,

housing officers were determined

not to let Miss Agboola get away with tenancy fraud.

We visited the address in Dagenham,

to see if we could speak with Miss Agboola,

to discuss her tenancy in the Greenwich area.

However, several visits were undertaken - there was no response.

The only way forward now was to interview Miss Agboola in the office

and put these matters to her,

and the evidence we had that she'd been subletting.

We sent a letter to interview Miss Agboola

and we asked her to come to the office.

Despite several requests to come in for an interview,

she failed to attend, so based on the evidence alone,

we got a summons and the matter went to court.

She was summoned to appear before Bexley magistrates,

where she pleaded guilty to charges under the Fraud Act

of no longer living in the property as her principal home

and subletting it.

The magistrate basically said the matter was so serious

that he would pass it over to the crown court for sentencing,

and that's where it went.

Miss Agboola was sentenced to a 12-month suspended prison sentence

and ordered to carry out 100 hours' work in the community.

She was also ordered to pay a total of £44,000

in costs and compensation.

Miss Agboola was also ordered by the judge to repay the full losses

of just over 44,000 to the Royal Borough of Greenwich

within the next 12 months.

The 12 months has now lapsed, but we are making every effort we can

to retrieve this money from Miss Agboola in a civil court.

However, given that she has got a substantial equity

in her Dagenham property, which she purchased some years ago,

we are now seeking to recover that money

and put a charge on her property in Dagenham.

So, ultimately, that means either she pays us the money voluntarily

or when the property is sold,

we would then seek the recovery of our money from her equity.

While the council's fight for financial compensation

looks set to continue,

the good news is that this one-bedroom flat has been recovered

and has now been allocated to someone off the housing list.

Well, the best punishment, for me personally,

I think it would be take them... take the house away from them

and give it to the actual people that actually need it.

And, as well, fine them...

I'm not saying an obscene amount of money,

but a good amount so that they will know,

and the next person will know, not to do it.

Well, I think the penalty should fit the crime and should fit

what they're capable of paying back in terms of society.

So, you know, I'd hate to see something

that was over and above, out of sync,

or out of step with what they were trying to achieve,

cos I don't think there's one size fits all.

I think you'll have people doing it

for a whole load of different reasons

and, therefore, your...

You know, your reaction to that

should be appropriate to what caused them to do it in the first place.

For people who have profited from, you know, subletting...

I'm an accountant - I understand money.

The only thing that hurts people is money.

Technically, the only way you can get people is if it costs them.

No other way.

Gone are the days when a council house was for life.

Nowadays, local authorities are scrutinising each and every property

to make sure they're in the hands of those in need.

Next, a couple who tried to pass their housing association home

on to their son, while pretending to still live in the property.

The tenants moved into this two-bedroomed maisonette

in Banbury, Oxfordshire, in 2013.

All was fine until two years later,

when the tenants contacted the housing association

to ask if they could move their 31-year-old son into the property

while they moved away.

Lee Mariconda is a housing officer at Paradigm Housing Association,

and the issue was brought to his attention.

So the initial call came in on 1st October

from one of the joint tenants, stating that they...

can we call them back regarding their tenancy?

They were thinking of moving out of the property,

but worried about what her 31-year-old son would do.

And she asked whether or not they could take over the tenancy.

We were very clear with her that that she couldn't leave the property

and leave the son there.

Two weeks later, and it seemed Lee's official tenants had ignored him.

A neighbour made a complaint about noise coming from the property.

The neighbour also claimed the official tenants had moved out

but that their son was still living there, and he'd moved a friend in.

Lee decided to check up on the property.

He visited twice but, each time, he found no-one at home.

On the first two visits, unannounced, there was no answer.

Lee received another complaint from a neighbour,

this time saying that a third man

appeared to have moved into the property,

the noise levels had increased,

and motorbikes had appeared in the garden.

The neighbours had contacted us simply because there was reports

of antisocial behaviour, and also the fact that they were aware

that the tenants had moved out and wanted to inform us of that.

After two failed attempts to find someone at home,

Lee went to the house again.

On the third visit, this was sort of our breakthrough

because, obviously, the allegations we had

that the son was living there

was actually the person who answered the door on that occasion.

We got pictures of him off of a social networking site,

so I had a picture of what he looked like.

So, obviously, when we went to the property

and found that it was actually him, I knew it was him anyway.

He didn't let me into the property at the time.

And he said at the time the only reason he answered the door,

was cos he thought I was actually from a broadband company.

And when I asked if I could see... speak to one of the tenants,

he said that the mum was at work.

Lee needed to know more, so he drafted in

the local authority's fraud manager, Garym Lambert,

to track down the whereabouts of the official tenants.

With social housing contacts throughout the borough,

Garym put the word out to his network

and discovered that they were living with their daughter at her house

in a nearby village.

It's a condition of their tenancy that they live in the property.

And it was clear that they had parted with possession.

But to ensure that we get, you know, a result on this,

we need to establish where else they may be living.

Garym paid several visits to the daughter's property,

where he hoped to find Lee's official tenants.

On his second early morning call, he found the woman at home.

She not only answered the door but held her hands up,

admitting she'd allowed her son

to live at their housing association home

while she and her husband had gone to live with their daughter.

She signed a notice to quit.

The termination date is now up and we're going to be getting that property back,

and we're now going to be able to give it to a family that are waiting.

But though the official tenants

have cooperated with the housing association,

it still remains to be seen whether their son

will be quite so willing to give up his bachelor pad.

Now Lee and Garym have an appointment at the house

to try and collect the keys and, hopefully, get the property back.

You never know what type of situation you're going to get into,

so you've got to remember that you're collecting a key

from somebody who, although has given us back the keys voluntarily,

they have actually been found out that they've been subletting

so, obviously, they could be quite hostile, they could be quite upset.

So you've got to be prepared when you get there

about how they're going to react.

It could just go as smoothly as possible -

hand the keys over and that's it.

But other times, they could have a bit of a...

They could sort of show their frustration at us.

So we have to be prepared for that.

-OK? Shall we go and get some keys?

-Yep. Go for it.

Lee and Garym have asked the crew to stay back,

as they're not sure what they'll find at the house.

Later, we find out the situation that awaited them.

We were met with quite a hostile situation, wasn't it?

-Yes. Yeah.

-Not so much from the mum. It was more from the son.

If it's your own property then you can do what you like.

But if it's by a housing association or a council, you know, it's...

Especially if you're getting it on the council, you know,

you should be living in there yourself,

and you should only be there if you really need it.

I do think social housing's important.

People do need somewhere to live,

and if they can't afford to buy, where do they go?

I mean, if you believe in any sort of welfare state,

social housing must surely be part of it.

It's not only social housing tenants who can get prosecuted

for illegally subletting their properties.

If they're found to be colluding with the subtenant,

that subtenant could be prosecuted for fraud.

One woman in Stevenage

was found guilty of fraud by misrepresentation

after subletting a one-bedroom council flat from her cousin.

Earlier, Luke was in Hackney, in east London,

on the trail of a tenant

who illegally sublet her flat for two years

whilst living halfway around the world, in Colombia.

The evidence proved she was out of the country.

On this occasion, the country code

showed that the call was coming in from Colombia,

and that's really when things started to pick up for us.

And further evidence showed

a Spanish family was living at her allocated flat.

This is absolutely watertight.

I guess no-one could argue with that. It's paper clear, isn't it?

Housing officer Emmanuel Akinde

decided to call time on his tenancy cheat.

A notice to quit was served on the flat,

but once his official tenant knew she'd been rumbled,

her partner took it out on the subtenants.

Luke's heading over to the property to find out more.

So tell me what happened when the actual official tenant

found out that you were investigating.

Well, they were not happy, as you'd expect.

They tried to force the subtenant out as soon as possible.

The relationship broke down absolutely between the two of them,

-and the

-BLEEP

-tried to have

the utilities in the property turned off,

which, obviously, did not go down too well.

That's outrageous. So he's got someone living in the property

and he's trying to turn off the utilities so they have no gas, electricity...

I guess he really wanted them to move out as soon as possible

so that we would not know exactly what's transpired.

-That's outrageous behaviour.

-It is terrible.

Emmanuel's legal case against the tenant was looking rock solid.

Shortly before the court hearing,

the official tenant finally agreed to hand back the keys

and repay the housing association £7,000.

That money went straight to the association's tenant welfare fund,

set up to help families in hardship.

But that's not the only good news, as the flat has been reallocated.

Soon, Joe Paraskeva will be able to come off Hackney's waiting list

and move into a new home.

So how long have you been on the housing list, waiting for a home?

-About a year and a half.

-OK.

So you must be really happy to have your own place, your own keys,

your own front door and your own privacy.

Yeah. It's big, it's spacious, nice area.

Yeah. Lived in Hackney my whole life.

I'm pretty happy, yeah.

This flat was actually being illegally sublet

for a really long time,

and then the housing association did an investigation,

so they worked hard and did everything to get the property back,

which means you get a home.

If the people hadn't been found out,

illegally subletting, you wouldn't have got this flat.

Yeah, I'd still be on the waiting list, looking for a place to live.

Yeah, this is a really nice place. Lucky it came up.

-Yeah.

-Wish you all the best with it.

-Yeah, Cheers, man. Thanks.

-Nice to meet you.

-Thank you very much. Yeah. You, too.

It's been really great to meet Joe, today -

a young man who genuinely needs social housing.

He can now put roots down here and start a new life,

all thanks to the determination and hard work of housing officers.

Social housing, I think, needs to be kept for people now.

If you go abroad, you have to come back and find your accommodation again.

I don't even understand how it's possible to move abroad

and still keep hold of a council property.

You're not living there any more, it's not your residence.

Someone else should be living in it.

In terms of going abroad, I think that's completely wrong

because, again, it boils down

to denying someone else the opportunity.

You could have... You know, you could have an empty property.

You could have someone living on the street.

Is that fair? No, not really.

The lengths that some people will go to

to obtain social housing is astonishing.

In Cornwall, a 50-year-old man

applied for a council house as a homeless person,

despite owning a property in Leicestershire.

As his story unravelled,

it was also revealed he rented out the house he owned.

He was sentenced to a three-year conditional discharge

and ordered to pay back costs of £1,200 to the council.

Earlier, in Banbury, in Oxfordshire,

housing officer Lee Mariconda and fraud manager Garym Lambert

were about to take back the keys

to one of their properties that had been misused.

The tenant had tried to pass on her social housing flat to her son,

who had moved in some friends.

-OK? Shall we go and get some keys?

-Yep. Go for it.

As they didn't know what they would face in the house,

the crew was asked to stand back while Lee and Garym went inside.

It was quite tense.

As soon as we even stepped foot on the pathway,

we were met with quite a hostile situation, wasn't it?

-Yes. Yeah.

-Not so much from the mum. It was more from the son.

Screaming, shouting, swearing...

Sort of aggressive. Not in your face or anything but, you know,

I think there was one comment he said was like, "Don't worry, Mum.

"You don't have to stand in front of me. I'm not going to hit him."

So... I mean, as a housing officer,

you're quite used to that type of behaviour but, obviously,

you don't ever want to be in the situation, do you?

-No, definitely not.

-Yeah.

Lee and Garym have given the tenants an hour to vacate the property.

Unfortunately, there are instances where people are...

you know, where we've sought possession of the property

and they've vented their feelings out on the property.

I've had instances where the floor's been ripped up, holes put in walls,

light sockets and plugs have been vandalised

and, generally, they've vented their feelings on the property

and it's taken weeks for remedial action to be taken

to actually make it habitable for somebody else.

We're hoping this isn't the case, but that is the worst-case scenario.

Now they're going back into the house to take full possession.

OK, well, they've left some stuff behind.

So this, again, could be some of the problems

that you're going to experience when, obviously, a property's left.

They'll leave stuff behind which, obviously,

we're going to have to clear, and they'll be recharged for that.

So...

OK, kitchen's not in a bad condition.

It'll probably just need a few adjustments,

and overhauls to doors and stuff.

They'll do the regular electric checks anyway,

just to make sure everything's safe.

-So...

-Small bedroom.

-Small bedroom, yeah.

-And...

-Not my choice of colours, but hey-ho.

-Each to their own.

-Other than that, it looks fine.

Yeah, it's a good standard.

Looking at the size of this bedroom,

this could probably be used for one adult,

one teenage child, I suppose, and...

-Or maybe two small children.

-Yeah, no, it's very pleasing. It's good.

As Lee said, it looks like there's very limited work

other than, you know, a bit of tidying up, more or less.

And, as you say, decoration is down to personal taste.

So, no matter what you could do,

the next tenants coming in mightn't like it.

So, as Lee said, give them the opportunity

to put their stamp on it, have actual ownership of the flat.

And, you know, size-wise,

it looks quite a nice little two-bed property.

And, you know, reasonably good condition.

Just ten days later, a new family is already lined up to move in.

-Hello.

-Hello.

-Nice to see you again.

-Hello.

-Hi, how are you?

-Yeah, I'm good, thanks.

This family had been living in a cramped

one-bedroom flat for over a year.

The property's ready to be re-let to you. So today's...

We've already done some of the paperwork, so we just need to do the sign-up today.

And then you get your keys and everything.

So you need to sign there.

Normal procedure would be for the flat to be redecorated,

but the family have asked to move in straightaway.

So this is going to be your room, is it?

-I think so.

-It's going to have to be!

Can you imagine Mum and Dad sleeping in here, and then you've got that big room to yourself?

And for 11-year-old son Adam, their new home is especially exciting

as he'll have his own space.

I'm so happy to have my own bedroom.

-Yeah? Are you happy?

-Yeah.

-Yeah, we are very happy.

I have family members that are waiting for social housing at the moment,

and it's been over a year and a half with...

She's a single mother with two children.

My parents, when they fell pregnant with me, you know, a long time ago,

you know, they had to find social housing really quickly,

and then they moved to their house

once I was old enough to be able to be moved into there.

And I think, looking back on my experiences growing up,

it was, you know, a real fond one.

I think if we hadn't had that and I found myself in a situation

where there wasn't available social housing,

my life could have been completely different.

I've got a son who's been on the housing list for nine years

in Hertfordshire,

and he's nowhere near the top of the list to get a council house.

Why that is, I do not know.

He's got a young daughter, a two-bedroom, dampness in the flat,

and he's still not classed as a priority.

Me and my family did actually go into council housing.

It was a time where it helped, where we were needing to be helped.

Housing fraud can be a money-spinner, until you get caught.

In Hackney, east London,

a 73-old-pensioner was found subletting to her daughter

while she'd moved in with her new husband.

After a tip-off from a neighbour, the daughter and her family

were evicted from the three-bedroomed house,

and the mother was ordered to pay back £30,000.

The next case involves a woman who was given a social housing flat

in the East End of London, who then took a job in Florida.

Nothing wrong with that, of course,

but instead of giving the keys back, she gave them to a friend.

This is a story of unlawful subletting,

with the official tenant overseas

and a friend masterminding a holiday lets business

from her housing association apartment,

and making a 300% profit.

Poplar, east London.

The glass towers of London's regenerated Canary Wharf

are just a mile away to the south.

A one-bedroom private apartment in Canary Wharf

can set you back as much as £2,000 a week.

And even just up the road, in much less fashionable Poplar,

the equivalent flat can fetch up to £500 a week,

so social housing is much sought-after.

Poplar Harca housing association manage 9,000 properties here,

including this apartment block.

And in one of the flats here,

neighbours had noticed an awful lot of comings and goings.

Avril Drummond, counter fraud investigator from Poplar Harca,

picks up the story with Luke.

We were alerted that they had a lot of different people coming and going

from the property, and staying there for a short term,

-so we then thought we had to investigate it.

-OK.

So Avril went to visit the property to see what was going on.

When we knocked on the door, early morning,

had a fairly young couple answer the door.

They were quite surprised to see us there.

They said they'd answered an advertisement

on a short let holiday website.

Unbeknownst to them, it was, obviously...

Well, it was our property. They were quite open and honest.

We went into the property. They showed us their identification.

They showed us the actual advertisement they'd answered,

and they were very open, they were quite shocked.

They were quite upset they'd been duped in this way.

The property had been advertised on a holiday lettings website.

As it happened, the occupants had a copy of the advert at the flat.

Luckily, I printed it out before it was actually taken off the site,

but that is the actual advertisement.

One-bedroom flat, kitchen, internet...

TV, central heating...

Yeah. I mean, it was advertised as a short let.

So, it was advertised for either £80 a night,

£500 a week or £1,600 a month.

Now, the social rent is only £400 a month.

If it was let on a weekly basis,

-they'd be making over £1,600 a month profit.

-Yeah.

-That's shocking, isn't it?

-It is shocking.

So Avril started investigating.

The official tenant, a single woman,

had moved in in 1994, but was nowhere to be seen.

In fact, the neighbours said they hadn't seen her for two years.

When Avril looked into the paperwork,

she discovered another address in north London

which the tenant was associated with.

We went to the other property in Stoke Newington.

The lady there, she was the one who told us

she believed her friend had moved to America.

Yes, the official tenant was, in fact,

living and working in Florida.

Nothing wrong with that, but when she went away, she'd given the keys

to her east London flat to a friend.

So your original tenant decided to go and live in the States?

-She did. I think she got remarried.

-OK.

She's moved to America, and she gave her the keys, thinking, well,

at least it's going to a friend of mine,

who will look after it and obviously needs the property.

That, in itself, is a breach of her tenancy, obviously,

because she should have notified us that she was leaving the property.

And it was the friend who'd been renting out the flat in east London.

But did the official tenant, in Florida, know?

Our tenant, she was very honest.

She held her hands up immediately

as soon as I confronted her with what I knew.

She gave me details of the person who she'd given her property to.

So I do believe that she didn't know that it had been used,

or misused, in such a manner.

-OK.

-However, as the legal tenant,

she was still legally liable for any offences that had been committed.

As the legal tenant,

you're responsible for making sure that you,

your visitors and lodgers comply with the tenancy agreement.

Any illegal activities,

and other offences such as antisocial behaviour,

represent a breach of tenancy.

In theory, you could be held legally responsible for any tenancy breach

that takes place in your home.

Obviously, they'd both, you know, committed offences,

but we had to really go through our lawful tenant...

-Yeah.

-..because she was the one who still held the tenancy, legally.

She did sound genuinely shocked

when I told her how the property had been misused,

and it had been advertised on this website.

She was really shocked and quite disgusted

with the way her friend had behaved, and she felt...

-I think she felt betrayed by her friend.

-OK.

Avril's priority was to get the place back

so she could reallocate it to someone in need of housing,

rather than people renting from holiday let websites.

She served a notice to quit.

I sent her... I served the notices on her in America.

We also served them at the property.

And she contacted me and asked me

if she could get all of her belongings out of the property,

so we allowed a friend of hers to come and collect the keys...

-OK.

-..get all her belongings out.

However, then the subtenant contacted me

and said they were her belongings, and I said, well, really,

you'll now need to kind of negotiate with the lawful tenant,

it's got nothing to do with us.

So the official tenant assured Avril

she didn't know what had been happening at the flat,

but her friend, who was masterminding the subletting,

also claimed she knew nothing.

She denied any knowledge of it.

She said she hadn't done anything wrong.

She denied being part of the fraud.

She was very upset

when her belongings were taken out of the property.

She's got no rights to that property. She wasn't even living in the borough.

She was handed the keys. However, she's then misused that trust.

Even though she shouldn't have had it in the first place,

she misused that totally, and then thought, well,

I can make a massive profit here, which she did do.

I haven't heard from her since that time.

I advised her to seek independent legal advice

and to, obviously, speak to her friend in America.

Surely, if she had any sense, she would just disappear,

because she's been illegally subletting a property

that's not hers and making a great profit.

Exactly. She was very lucky she wasn't prosecuted.

But at the end of the day, we wanted our property back

and, as I said, I couldn't really liaise with her.

-She wasn't our lawful tenant.

-Sure.

-So...

If there's anything to take away from this, Avril's advice

is to always tell the social housing manager what's going on.

Saying it to anyone now who is thinking about possibly moving away,

you know, the circumstances change, that's fine.

You need to notify your landlord and be honest with them.

If you're going to be moving away

and you no longer need that social tenancy,

you need to let the landlord know so they can then give it to a family

who's possibly been on a waiting list for ten years,

rather than just give it to a friend who might misuse it.

It's a breach of tenancy. It's also illegal now.

What's the story with the property now?

The person who's now living there,

she was on the waiting list for a long time, so she was very grateful,

and I believe she'll use the property, you know,

for the purpose which it's intended for, as social housing.

It's so rewarding to see social housing taken from tenancy cheats

and given to those who really need it.

And with more and more housing investigators out on the street,

the crackdown continues.