Dudley tenants flouting laws and renting council homes for money

More than 500 housing fraud investigations were launched during 2013/14.

As well as illegal sub-letting, officers also uncovered cases where tenants hadn't been using their property as their only home and had been living elsewhere some of the time.

There were also tenants who had abandoned their properties and people who not moved out when the named tenant had died.

Dudley Council said in 12 months, there were 84 cases of tenancy fraud.

It comes as the demand for properties in the borough continues to grow. Housing bosses recently announced plans to build around 350 new homes to help fill the gap.

It also cancelled or excluded eight people from its waiting list because they made a fraudulent application for a property and detected and denied one fraudulent Right to Buy application.

Director of adult, community and housing services Andrea Pope-Smith said: "The demand for council housing in Dudley far outweighs the number of properties available.To ensure we get best value from our council homes, it is important we prevent them from being obtained or used fraudulently.

"We recruited two tenancy fraud officers to our anti-social-behaviour team to ensure we are taking a robust approach to both fraud detection and prevention."

She added: "We are continuing our work with social housing providers across the West Midlands in a joint initiative to detect more fraud. We are doing this by sharing data and intelligence that will highlight potential fraudsters living in our accommodation.

"Changes to legislation during 2013/14 have made sub-letting social housing a criminal offence. The council now has the power to prosecute offenders under this legislation which could see those who commit this type of fraud go to prison."

The council regularly receives tip-offs from the public which lead to investigations.

In November last year, it received an anonymous call through its fraud hotline about a tenant, who was sub-letting his flat in Stourbridge to a couple, while claiming housing benefit and living elsewhere.

While the tenant initially denied the allegations made, he did later surrender possession of the property.