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.
Cases include Right to Buy scams
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 April 1 and September 30, according to the local authority's Mid-Year Counter Fraud Report.
Financial impact of fraud
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".
Previous prosecutions
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.
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.
