Council has claimed £300,000 from tenancy fraudsters since last year

Islington Town Hall. Photograph: Islington Citizen

Islington Council has clawed back hundreds of thousands of pounds cheated from the local authority by social housing swindlers, the Town Hall’s leader has confirmed.

In the past year, 75 properties in the borough were recovered from their tenancies following the discovery of fraud, allowing the council to reclaim £300,000 in “unlawful profits”.

At Thursday’s (1 May) corporate resources and economy scrutiny committee, council leader Una O’Halloran (Labour, Bunhill) said the local authority was making a “big push” on the issue.

“We make no apologies when we get homes back,” she said, adding that it was a “really good news story” that the clandestine gains had been returned to the public purse.

Those properties used for tenancy fraud were reallocated to residents on the housing waitlist, she said.

Thursday’s meeting marked an annual review of the Labour-run administration’s “mission-based” approach to delivering council services.

On housing, the local authority found it had made good progress overall.

The Town Hall leader highlighted the purchase of 370 ex-Right-to-Buy properties, inching the borough closer to its target of 410 homes earmarked as part of a £1bn project to tackle homelessness.

Forty-seven new homes at social rent were also delivered in the past year, including at Dixon Clark Court and Andover Estate.

O’Halloran noted that temporary accommodation was still on the rise, having increased by 16 per cent from last year.

But the report contrasted this data point by pointing out that, “unlike most London boroughs”, Islington had no families in bed and breakfast accommodation.

However, a key focus and “challenge” for the council was keeping up investment in building safety in those homes it already manages.

Regulating building safety and repairs had proved “challenging” due to a “significant backlog in decisions” due from the Building Safety Regulator.

Despite £100m annual investment, the Town Hall has also struggled to maintain the government’s minimum social housing standards for over 4 per cent of council homes, due to rising costs and insufficient funding.

“We are prioritising key areas of investment, such as safety, major component renewal and maintaining key service delivery,” the report added.

For the coming year, the council’s “key priorities and activities” include completing new builds, preparing for a visit from the social housing regulator, and developing services for private renters.

The Town Hall is also awaiting public feedback on plans to make the majority of Islington’s private landlords get a licence to rent out their properties.

Meanwhile, over the next two years, £200m is to be invested in homelessness support and prevention.

Discussions then turned to a recent tweet from the leader of Greenwich Council, who had last week taken to X (formerly Twitter) to commend his authority for reducing the use of hotels for emergency housing by 84 per cent over 18 months.

Cllr Bashir Ibrahim (Labour, Arsenal) wondered how Islington could better promote its own results.

“I’m very selfish in that I want Islington to be London’s biggest success story,” he said, highlighting that his borough had avoided using B&Bs to tackle homelessness.

O’Halloran replied: “I’m sorry Greenwich, but Islington is far better,” arguing that other authorities had sought her council’s advice on how to deal with temporary accommodation.

“We might need to get someone to tweet something out,” she said.