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City council prevents over half of Right to Buy applications in anti-fraud drive
A council in the South East of England prevented over half of Right to Buy applications last year as part of its anti-fraud efforts.
Oxford City Council prevented a total of 42 false or irregular Right to Buy applications out of the 81 accepted, according to figures shown to the council’s audit and governance committee.
That equates to 52% of total applications prevented between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023.
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The committee estimated these interventions avoided a loss of £3.6m for the council, based on a calculation of £87,200 discount saved per home.
Each of the 42 intercepted applications resulted from due diligence and anti-money laundering checks made by the counter-fraud team at the beginning of the application phase, the council said.
Linda Smith, cabinet member for housing at Oxford City Council, said: “The council’s fraud investigation team does a thorough job checking each application for Right to Buy to make sure fraudulent applications are detected and stopped.
“Fraudulent applications could have cost the council millions, but thanks to the work of the fraud investigation team, these properties will remain as part of our stock of affordable housing.
“Oxford needs more affordable homes, and we are busy building more council homes for households on our housing register to rent.”
Wolverhampton Council revealed in May that it had prevented more than £1.6m of social housing fraud in the past two years, including the illegal subletting of properties.
As part of that figure, Wolverhampton stopped two fraudulent Right to Buy applications worth £168,400.
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