Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 5 September 2017 to Question 5843, how many of the defendants proceeded against in 2016 were resident in London; and what steps his Department is taking to encourage greater use of the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act 2013.

This Government is committed to supporting landlords to tackle the small minority of social tenants who, by cheating the system, deprive those in need of a social home.

That is why we supported and implemented the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act 2013 (‘the 2013 Act’), which came into force on 15 September 2013. The Act increases the deterrent to tenants considering cheating the system, allows those who do cheat to be detected more easily and punished more severely, and encourages social landlords to take a more proactive approach to tackling fraud in their stock.

It is also why, between 2011 and 2015, we provided £19 million of funding: to help local authorities, working in partnership with other social landlords, to tackle social housing fraud; and provided funding to support the Chartered Institute of Housing to provide hands-on practical advice to landlords on which policies and procedures work best.

The Audit Commission’s 2014 and final Protecting the Public Purse report found that the number of social homes recovered from tenancy fraudsters in 2013/14 had increased by 15 per cent over the previous year to 3,030. The 2016 Protecting the Public Purse, now compiled and published by TEICCAF, reported that in 2015/16 there were 2,700 investigations of social housing fraud generating an estimated £50,200,000 worth of savings across the country. The national average of properties recovered per authority during that period was 34.

We have no plans currently to commission an estimate of the extent of tenancy fraud in social housing. We will, however, continue to keep the implementation of the 2013 Act under review.

We do not hold information on the residence of defendants proceeded against for offences under the 2013 Act.