Hillingdon (Parliament Politics Magazine) – Hillingdon Council has uncovered £10.9m in housing fraud during a crackdown on tenancy cheats, marking one of the borough’s largest fraud investigations.
Over 80% of the savings recovered by a West London council’s counter fraud squad in the past 12 months have been attributable to tenancy fraud.
The council in Hillingdon has collected more than £8.9 million as a result of the “extortionate” charges of housing and lease fraud. Subletting a council house, asking for or getting a council tenancy fraudulently, and illegal tenancy successions are a few examples of this.
Hillingdon Council’s counterfraud unit recovered £10.9 million from fraudulent activity last year. About 82 percent of this was due to tenancy fraud.
The council’s Counter Fraud Manager, Laura Piggott, informed the Local Democracy Reporting Service [LDRS] that fraud had increased overall.
She said:
“I would say there is more, there is an increase in fraud.
It doesn’t seem to be going away. I’ve done this job now for about 10 years, and usually you see it go up and down, it’s a bit like the low hanging fruit, that’s the kind of technology we use…
At the moment, I just feel like we’ve been at the low hanging fruit since covid, it’s not drying up, if anything, I’m not running out of work.”
Compared to the previous year, the council’s counter-fraud staff reclaimed 8% more properties in the 2024–2025 fiscal year. As a result, the council regained ownership of 112 properties.
A woman was sentenced to a suspended jail period and had to pay over £6,300 to Hillingdon Council just last month after a council inquiry revealed that she had filed a false housing application even though she had a permanent home outside the borough.
On Friday, June 6, Amira Issa, 41, of Tustin Estate, Southwark, was convicted of two counts under the Fraud Act 2006 at the Ealing Magistrates Court.
She then used this premise to apply for council housing, and when her application was reviewed, it was discovered that she had connections to an address in Southwark. She never mentioned to the council that she had been living away from the Hayes property for a while or that her living status had changed.
Giving incorrect information on a housing application is considered fraud since it is an attempt to get services or property by deceit. Issa’s defense team claimed at sentencing that she was not driven by self-interest.
Nonetheless, magistrates determined that she purposefully misled the authorities after considering the expense to Hillingdon taxpayers of the investigation and the prolonged dishonesty.
Laura described the cost of tenancy fraud to the Hillingdon council taxpayer as extortionate. She added:
“We’ve got a huge amount of people in emergency accommodation… for every property we get back, that means one of them genuine families coming through gets housed.”
For each property recovered, the council saves around £70,000. However, the cost of the tenancy alone doesn’t tell the full story.
Due to a shortage of council homes, which comes at a high cost, the local government is paying enormous sums to house families who actually require a council home in B&Bs for each day that someone is living illegally in a council home.
What enforcement actions did Hillingdon take against fraudsters?
The council has prosecuted individuals caught committing fraud, including tenancy fraud and misuse of housing resources. In one case, a woman who falsified information on her housing application was sentenced to a suspended custodial sentence and ordered to repay the council.
The council recovers properties from fraudulent occupiers, enabling genuine tenants to be rehoused. In 2024/25, 112 council properties were recovered. Hillingdon Council also runs amnesty schemes encouraging fraudulent occupiers to return properties voluntarily with no penalty.
Enforcement actions extend beyond housing to other fraud types, such as prosecuting misuse of Blue Badges and parking permits, where offenders have been fined.