50,000 social homes being used for fraud in London as scammers cost taxpayers £1bn a year, report claims

We seem to have reached an unstoppable loop of fraud.

Nobody actually checks in person who is who and why do they live there.

Most systems have now been automated. Social housing providers no longer place their housing officers into the estates they manage, leaving tenants, residents to be left to their own devices on the estates. Having spoken to care takers, they have no access to housing resident information and cannot know whether a person in a flat is the actual, legal tenant.

This not only causes problems when trying to help Cuckooing victims, whose flats are used by criminals mostly for drug dens, but also makes it impossible to quickly find out who the legal tenants are supposed to be.

The report, alleging 50,000 social homes are used to cost tax payers £1 Billion per year because of fraudulent use, alleges that

Scammers can’t cost tax payers £1 Billion per annum https://t.co/FmmgvI6EFB

— Tower Hamlets Crime Watch (@th_crime_watch) March 16, 2025

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London social rent homes are being illegally sublet among other forms of fraud, new research warns.

Yet, where do we break the cycle of fraud, if nobody checks who the residents are?

The Neighbourhood Watch website Ourwatch does not carry out any ID or address checks for registrants on their site and Tower Hamlets Police regularly promote this in newsletters. It seems because even @BBC regularly promote the myth of Neighbourhood Safety, by telling us Neighbourhood Watch is great if you register on a website that doesn’t carry out ID or police checks, that’s why there is silent promotion of this flawed idea.

Tower Hamlets Council also links to them. Neighbourhood Watch, which is also sponsored by the Home Office, they no longer state whether a watch group is Metropolitan Police verified but, regardless anyone can join any group.

Community safety starts with knowing who we are dealing with

that’s why why we do not accept unverified online members.

We now even make it more difficult to join us or donate to us. You must tell us why you want to donate, we do not want members who might belong to illegal groups.

We do not promote any marked geographical zones, associate those with coordinators’ names. Note, that if you are visible as Neighbourhood Watch coordinator, you are known to be a police informer and that can have dire consequences in a city full of gangsters and people with criminal intentions.

It’s no longer a deterrent to have a Neighbourhood Watch sticker on your window, it might however get you attacked in the street or by your neighbours, who might use their flat for illegal purposes.

We rely on confidential membership, and safe electronic communications. No need to advertise ourselves as belonging.

I am very well known in Tower Hamlets for working as Police volunteer and therefor live with this known risk. But you can become a police volunteer or Crime Watch member without being openly promoted for doing so.

Our community safety depends on making our living arrangements safe and our landlords have the biggest role to play in this. Unfortunately Councils or housing associations rely on informants but do not carry out regular checks on dwellings occupants.

The research added that rates of detection for illegal subletting of council and housing association properties had fallen by more 40 per cent in the last decade.