The increasing popularity of short-term lets has added a new dimension to sub-letting problems faced by social housing landlords. I have written previously on this subject 3 times: August 2019, August 2022 and December 2023.
Over 4 years ago I ran my first webinar on this issue and last month ran my latest event along with Stephanie Toghill:
By way of practical application, in August of this year Birmingham City Council reported on a successful prosecution of a tenant that had unlawfully sublet their local authority flat after advertising the property for rent via Airbnb. They rented out the property for a total of 158 nights, pleaded guilty to 3 offences in the magistrates’ court and signed a notice to quit to terminate their tenancy.
The value to local housing authorities of such work was seen by a press release from Brighton & Hove Council in June 2024 reporting that investigators had “saved more than half a million pounds in Brighton and Hove City Council’s housing department alone last year”. One of its councillors said:
“I’m doing a lot of door knocking at the moment and we often find the person who is supposed to be in a house isn’t in the house.”
“I think that Airbnb is quite interesting, particularly in my ward (West Hill and North Laine), which is a city centre ward. Tenants will say to me ‘that’s an Airbnb’. Someone said that to me in a council block the other day.”
“If it’s a leasehold property, there’s nothing we can do about that but obviously if it’s one of our properties then that would be very concerning.”
Follow the Tenancy Fraud Forum, who for this week are providing on LinkedIn ‘top tips’ to assist social landlords in their fight against social housing fraud.
#fraudweek
