Westminster council has recovered 13 council homes in some of central London’s most exclusive neighbourhoods after social tenants were found illegally subletting them or leaving them empty.
The properties were seized between April and September as the council stepped up its crackdown on housing fraud. Investigators uncovered tenancy breaches and recovered flats in Mayfair, Maida Vale, St John’s Wood, Paddington, Soho and Pimlico.
The cases involved tenants who were illegally subletting or had abandoned council homes, made bogus housing applications, or were conducting a Right to Buy scam. The recovered properties included six one-bedroom, five two-bedroom and two three-bedroom flats.
Westminster’s Corporate Anti-Fraud Service (CAFS) currently has 248 live cases, more than a third of which were opened between 1 April and 30 September, according to the local authority’s Mid-Year Counter Fraud Report.
The report states: “Tenancy fraud remains a high-risk issue, sometimes accounting for over 65% of the investigator’s caseload.” It adds: “Investigation methods can be resource-intensive, although CAFS continue to explore the use of technology alongside the full extent of legislation to tackle this fraud type as efficiently as possible.”
The council said the anti-fraud team “generated 39 positive outcomes” over the six-month period, saving an estimated £476,430 and “identified a notional loss of £336,915”. Homes recovered in this way are returned to the council so they can be allocated to families in genuine need.
The recovery comes after the borough earlier this year prosecuted a man who fraudulently obtained a council flat near Buckingham Palace. Saeed Yasin Hosseini was handed the one-bedroom property in Jessel House, Page Street in 2011 and illegally rented it out while living with his wife in north London. He was ordered to pay back £500,000 after buying the Pimlico property under the Right to Buy scheme, receiving a £100,000 discount on the sale.
A social tenant found in 2025 renting out their Soho council flat on Airbnb while living in France was among more than £1 million of fraud identified by Westminster City Council last year.
Subletting social housing has been an offence since the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act 2013, with fraudsters facing eviction, fines and up to two years in prison. The crackdown comes as the Government and Airbnb have agreed a data-sharing partnership to help councils identify tenants illegally subletting social housing, with early results showing 470 potential cases of fraud identified across participating local authorities, including Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea.
A number of London boroughs have launched crackdowns on tenancy fraud in recent years as the cost of housing the homeless in temporary accommodation puts a major strain on budgets. Hammersmith and Fulham said it has launched probes into 33 properties in 2025 and 2026. The council asks anyone who suspects a council home is being unlawfully sublet to report it.
The scale of the problem goes well beyond Westminster. Across England, an estimated 5,800 social homes are suspected of being illegally sublet on short-term rental platforms, with each case of tenancy fraud costing taxpayers an estimated £78,300.
In a Right to Buy scam, a tenant fraudulently obtains a council home and then buys it at a discount, as in the Hosseini case, where the £100,000 discount was part of the £500,000 he was ordered to pay back. The council’s Mid-Year Counter Fraud Report, which covers the six months from April to September, says tenancy fraud is its highest-risk fraud type, and that the anti-fraud service is exploring the use of technology to tackle it more efficiently.
The crackdown is the latest in a series of council rows in the capital. Wandsworth Council has been selling off empty family council houses instead of re-letting them, and Islington Council has given itself permission to turn a community centre into offices.
