Councils are cracking down on housing fraud

A new scheme will strongly encourage councils and local authorities to crack down on fraud in the welfare system, with a focus on housing. As much as £35m is being used as a cash award to councils that meet the goals and reduce waste and fraud in their area, and this should have an added benefit of ensuring all council support goes to the most deserving in the future. Presently, many studies estimate that over £3.4bn goes to waste each year in the housing sector.

With evictions skyrocketing across the UK, and hundreds of thousands of tenants faced with homelessness each year, the fraud in the system is impacting some people that truly do need rental assistance or even free advice. By the government creating this housing benefit fraud and error local authority incentive scheme, and providing funds and incentives to it, they in effect are saying enough is enough and that future support needs to go to honest tenants that are truly struggling.

Uses of government funds for combating housing fraud

The money will go to councils at the local and county levels is they are successful in combating fraud in the housing sector. There will be targets put into place, and if the goals are met, money will be given to the council in question, and they can use that money at their discretion.

Not only will more incentives be given to councils, but additional funds will be given to the Department for Work and Pensions and their fraud prevention teams. Among other things, this will help that organisation reduce overpayments to undeserving families or tenants, and ensure the assistance goes to people that truly need it.

More money will also be used to improve the Debt Market Integrator programme. This is a tool used to help collect rent arrears from tenants on benefits or that owe money to their landlord. This additional collection emphasis will also do a part in reducing waste.

If successful, this will reduce the amount that taxpayers are basically wasting, as £3.4bn is a significant some of money. Another major benefit is that is fraud is cut back, more honest families will be able to get help for their housing or rent needs. In effect, over £3bn could either be allocated to that need, or the government may dedicate to use that money that is saved for other welfare schemes or even to pay down national debt. So there are different possibilities.

No matter what is done, reducing fraud will put less strain on the existing welfare system. It will also allow the existing benefit system to better target the most deserving.