It’s estimated that tenancy fraud costs the public purse around £900 million every year, with around 100,000 social housing homes across the UK affected by some level of tenancy fraud.
By using MRI Tenancy Analytics, Metropolitan Housing over two years managed to identify 126 proven cases of tenancy fraud, resulting in a saving of £1,323,000 to the public purse.
It was in 2017 that Housing Partners started working with Metropolitan Housing to implement our Tenancy Analytics solution to help support them with challenges, such as identifying and supporting tenants at risk from the rollout of Universal Credit, assessing and managing tenancy sustainability, tracing former tenant debt and securing income by growing the sign up of Direct Debit payments.
Phase One
Throughout the financial year from 2018-2019, Metropolitan increasingly used Tenancy Analytics to identify tenancy fraud within their housing stock, which resulted in them discovering 54 proven cases of fraud including:
• illegal subletting
• fraudulent right to buy applications
• refused succession application
• abandoned properties
The public purse saving from these 54 cases is estimated at £693,000. This saving is made up of £684,000 relating to 38 subletting cases, and £9,000 relating to a refused right to buy application. Furthermore, Tenancy Analytics has identified 11 cases where the property was not used as the sole and principal home, 3 abandoned properties, 1 refused succession application and 1 right to buy refused application.
Chris Whiteman, Strategic Debt Manager at Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing commented, “Housing Partners gave us the opportunity to focus on potential fraud and the Tenancy Analytics solution enabled the business to focus on high priority cases resulting in clear success. Tenancy Analytics is an important tool for helping us identify tenancy fraud.”
Tim Millns, Director of Income & Leasehold Services, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing added: “The Tenancy Analytics solution has proved invaluable for the income team. In 2 years of using the product, Tenancy Analytics has supported the recovery of 126 homes, which we have been able to reallocate to those most in need.”
Phase Two
Metropolitan merged with Thames Valley Housing Association to form Metropolitan Thames Valley Homes. Between them, the two organisations own and manage over 57,000 homes in London, the South East, the East Midlands and the East of England. Given Metropolitan’s existing positive experiences with Housing Partners, following the merger, they decided to bring our services forward into the new organisation.
In Spring 2019 Housing Partners started working with Metropolitan Thames Valley to implement Tenancy Analytics for their Thames Valley stock, concentrating primarily on tenancy fraud.
Lisa Gilbert, Housing Services Manager commented, “Following the success, the business has already seen, I’m really looking forward to implementing to identify tenancy fraud and recover much-needed homes for our tenants who are desperate to try and find a move via our transfer list.”
Since April 2019, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing has had continued success with using Tenancy Analytics to identify tenancy fraud. During the period from April 2019 – August 2020, there were 72 additional proven cases of fraud, including:
• 35 incidences of subletting
• 9 cases in which the property was not being used as the sole and principal home
• 7 refused succession applications
• 20 abandoned properties
• 1 right to buy application refused
Chris Whiteman, Strategic Debt Manager, Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing commented: “The Tenancy Analytics solution enabled the business to focus on high priority cases resulting in clear success. Tenancy Analytics is an important tool for helping us identify tenancy fraud.”
The total saving from these 72 proven cases is estimated at £630,000.
Speaking of the overall outcome for Metropolitan Thames Valley of using Tenancy Analytics, Tim Millns, Director of Income & Leasehold Services at Metropolitan Thames Valley added: “The Tenancy Analytics solution has proved invaluable for the Income team; firstly, using pre-tenancy checks to identify upfront any tenants who may struggle to pay their rent so we can allocate the appropriate resource and ensure the tenancy does not fail. Secondly, the ongoing work the team is undertaking to tackle fraud within our stock – in 24 months of using the product, Tenancy Analytics has supported the recovery of 126 homes, which we have been able to reallocate to those most in need.”
Greg Andrews, MRI Senior Solutions Architect, sees a bright future for Tenancy Analytics within the organisation: “The results Metropolitan has seen to date are outstanding and genuinely shows that Tenancy Analytics is a leading solution to help Housing providers identify and tackle tenancy fraud. I look forward to working with the Metropolitan Thames Valley team on embedding Tenancy Analytics in the organisation and continue to support them to recognise the benefits of this powerful tool.”
