The Wandsworth council tenant illegal sublet case has ended with a £64,743.54 repayment order — and the tenant must hand her one-bedroom flat back to the council.
Priscilla Antah advertised her council flat on Gumtree, where a couple with a young child agreed to pay her £1,200 a month, believing she owned the property. The arrangement only came to light when she stopped paying her own rent and a council officer visited to serve a formal warning — the family told the officer their landlord did not live there.
According to the council, Ms Antah denied any subletting when challenged. She claimed a relative had been staying at the flat while she was away, said she did not know the family, and even called the police in an attempt to have them illegally evicted.
The council took the case to court and won. Ms Antah was ordered to repay the £64,743.54 she had collected and to surrender the flat, which can now be let to someone on the housing waiting list. The council’s announcement did not name the court, give a date for the judgment, or say what happened to the family.
Key facts
- Who: Priscilla Antah, a Wandsworth council tenant
- The order: Repay £64,743.54 and hand back her one-bedroom council flat
- The Wandsworth council tenant illegal sublet: She advertised the flat on Gumtree; a couple with a young child paid £1,200 a month for three years, believing she owned it
- How she was caught: She stopped paying her own rent; an officer serving a formal warning was told by the family that their landlord did not live there
- Her denial: Claimed a relative was staying while she was away, said she did not know the family, and called the police to try to have them illegally evicted
A wider crackdown on tenancy fraud
The Wandsworth council tenant illegal sublet ruling is the latest in a series the council has chosen to publicise. Two similar cases have been announced since December 2024: one came to light when a subtenant complained that there was no heating, and the other was caught by the council’s own checks.
Sublets in the borough are investigated by the South West London Fraud Partnership, a 15-strong team that Wandsworth shares with Kingston, Merton, Richmond and Sutton. The team also handles blue badge, parking and staff fraud — and Wandsworth’s share of its time amounts to just under five full-time investigators covering 17,353 council homes.
A report to the council’s audit committee in March set out how stretched the team is. Tenancy fraud accounts for half of all investigation time, but the days set aside for proactively hunting fraud — rather than waiting to be told about it — have been cut by about a quarter, from 182 to 139. In total the team expects to spend 920 days on Wandsworth this year, down from 990.
Even so, in the eleven months to late February the team recovered 40 homes for the council and housing associations, beating its target of 36. The number of tenancy fraud cases it worked on fell to 222, against 303 in the whole of the previous year. Every recovered property, the report says, “frees up a place for a family on the Council’s waiting list therefore reducing the impact of the temporary housing costs” — a reminder of why councils taking over homes left empty matters.
The cost of the housing crisis
The stakes are high. Wandsworth is spending £28.6 million of council tax a year on temporary accommodation, where housing a family costs up to £2,226 a month — against £645 for a council home. Around 13,000 households are on the waiting list.
Councillor Peter Graham, the council’s deputy leader and cabinet member for finance, said: “Having a council home is a privilege. It means having a rent well below what others have to pay. People who sublet our council homes aren’t just defrauding us; they are defrauding their neighbours and those in genuine housing need.”
“We will prosecute anyone abusing that privilege and breaking the law,” he added. “If you know about illegal subletting in Wandsworth, get in touch and let us take action.”
Most cases still come to light through referrals rather than detective work. Kevin Holland, the council’s assistant director for fraud, risk and insurance, told the audit committee that the vast majority of the team’s cases arrive as referrals, mostly from housing teams. Of 264 tenancy fraud cases worked on between April 2024 and January 2025, just 29 began with a tip-off from a member of the public.
What you can do
The Wandsworth council tenant illegal sublet case shows why the council wants residents to report suspicions: email the South West London Fraud Partnership at swlfp@richmondandwandsworth.gov.uk.
And if you are renting a flat from someone you found online, check who actually owns it first. A free search of the government’s property register gives a summary of most homes, and for £7 you can download the title register, which names the owner. If the owner is the council or a housing association, the person taking your rent should not be.
The ruling comes as the council continues its wider cost-cutting drive — and as its £450,000 plan to move a Putney crossing underlines how closely every pound of town hall spending is now watched.
