Westminster City Council has welcomed a new data-sharing agreement between Airbnb and the Government to help identify tenants illegally subletting social housing. Council leaders say the initiative will make it easier to recover homes from fraudsters and return them to families in genuine need, while protecting taxpayers from an estimated £2 billion in annual losses. Westminster Conservatives are also calling on other short-term rental platforms to follow Airbnb's lead and help tackle tenancy fraud.
The article below by Zachariah Sharif and Madeleine Ross is in the Telegraph, and you can read it here.
Airbnb to snitch on social housing cheats after taxpayers lose £2bn
Rental platform to help local authorities catch tenants subletting their homes
Airbnb will be forced to report social housing cheats to the Government as fraudulent listings cost the taxpayer almost £2bn a year.
A new data-sharing agreement between the property platform and the Cabinet Office will help local authorities identify tenants who illegally list their properties across London, where there are an estimated 50,000 cases of tenancy fraud annually, as well as in Edinburgh, Birmingham and Anglesey.
More than 450,000 properties will be covered by the partnership between Airbnb and the participating local authorities.
It is estimated that as many as 5,800 social homes could be illegally sublet on short-term rental platforms in England. Early results have already enabled the Cabinet Office to uncover 470 cases of potential fraud.
Satvir Kaur, a Cabinet Office minister, said: “This Government will always crack down on those taking advantage of taxpayers and depriving families of the homes they desperately need.
“We are calling on other short-term letting platforms and councils to follow this lead.”
Taxpayers lose around £2bn a year to social housing cheats, according to a report by the Tenancy Fraud Forum (TFF).
Tenancy fraud is a criminal offence which can include making false applications for homes or for Right To Buy provisions, as well as subletting social homes while living elsewhere – for which a fraudster can face two years’ prison time.
Shimeon Lee, a policy analyst at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “Social homes should be for families in genuine need, not fraudsters turning taxpayer-funded properties into private cash machines.”
Mr Lee called for the Government to force other major rental platforms to share data to tackle the scale of the issue.
Airbnb had previously refused to share information with councils investigating homes advertised on its website, blaming data protection laws, but was commanded to do so by a High Court Order in 2022.
Investigators had been relying on patchy data, including council tax records, social media posts and even mobile phone surveillance, to catch out cheats.
Detection rates were unreliable as a result. These fell by more than 40pc in the last decade in London, partly because of funding cuts from central government, according to the TFF.
‘Abusing the system’
In the 12 months to April, Barnet council investigated more than 450 cases of tenancy fraud, with 59 properties recovered and three criminal prosecutions.
In June, Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association (ISHA) declared a “tenancy fraud amnesty”, allowing potential fraudsters to return their keys without facing prosecution until July 17.
Elizabeth Campbell, the leader of Kensington and Chelsea council, said it had recovered 20 illegally sublet homes in the last year.
She said: “This council has long called for short-term letting platforms to share the data needed to identify illegal subletting and stop people profiteering from publicly funded homes, so we strongly welcome this agreement with Airbnb.”
In one example, Airbnb data sharing allowed the council to identify a council flat in Soho, Westminster, which had been on its website for more than a year. The tenant – who had been living in France – was fined £12,890.
Paul Swaddle, the leader of Westminster City council, said: “Other platforms now need to step up. There is no hiding place for anyone abusing the system and we will continue rooting out illegal subletting and returning homes to those most in need.”
Lisa Marçais, of Airbnb, said: “Social housing fraud has no place on Airbnb. We’re proud to have driven the first ever data-sharing agreement of this kind... but to truly tackle this problem, we need the entire short-term rental industry to follow suit and participate in this initiative.”
