Some of the numbers in this story about illegal tenants are staggering.    Illegal tenants are those renting a council or housing association home from  the official tenant who is not living there but sub-letting it.

On the face of it, there seems to be no problem.  Won’t a lot of those tenants be paying something a bit above the social housing rent but lower than the private rentsthat they can’t afford?   Unfortunately, although in some cases there are deserving cases who would otherwise not be able to afford anywhere, it is not as simple as that.The Audit Commission estimates that, on average, each council or housing association place that is illegally sub-let can cost £75,000!   That can be the extra cost of putting families in bed & breakfast places instead of an otherwise vacant flat, the cost of paying housing benefit to people to pay inflated private rents with because there is nocouncil home to put them in at a lower cost, or it can just be the cost of building extra homes.  Sounds like a lot, but I imagine they did the groundwork.

Another big number is there could be as many as 5% of social homes being sub-let in inner-city areas.  Five is not a big number, but five percent of the 750,000 council and housing association homes in London alone means 37,500 homes.  If they are really costing £75,000 each that comes to a drain of £2.8 billion just in London.

Sounds like it would be a good idea for a few other councils to follow Southwark’s lead and employ someone just to look for such cases.  If the Audit Commission figures are anywhere near right, they would only have to find one example a year each and be paying for themselves.  Not only that, they would be restoring a bit of justice by reducing the number of social housing units that are allocated to people who patently do not need them.