The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham’s high-profile crackdown on social housing fraud has revealed stunning results with £2,680-a-day recovered for the public purse.
The borough joined forces with Experian to deploy the latest fraud detection and data-matching techniques to analyse its social tenancy records.
Experian analysis combined with an in-depth local knowledge of housing staff helped pave the way for potential savings of £654,000 within the first eight months.
This figure is expected to top £1 million by the end of the financial year.
Around 300 high-risk properties were flagged up and investigated.
In some cases keys were very quickly surrendered following an e-mail, phone call or visit from the local authority.
Legal action is being taken against some offenders.
As a result, Hammersmith & Fulham now expects to cut fraud even further after implementing more stringent identity checks.
The authority has also taken a lead with Experian in developing a UK-wide data-sharing service accessible to all social housing providers.