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01 August 2018
Helping provide excellent homes to those in need is a key priority for Guinness. Sometimes, to do this, we have to act when we find our homes are being used for fraudulent or illegal purposes.
We’ve been successful in recovering a sublet property in South London that we’ve been investigating for almost two years. The property has now been let to those who have a genuine housing need.
We were made aware of suspicious activity and carried out various checks and searches to see who was registered as living in the property and who was actually residing there.
We discovered that a sub-tenant had been living at the property for many years. They had been paying the rent, Council Tax, and utilities at the property. Yet the tenant was careful to maintain links to the property making it more difficult to prove that they were not using the property as their main home.
Once we’d gathered all the evidence, we served a notice to quit (ending the tenancy) on the tenant and made an application to court to gain possession of our property.
After a trial in January 2018, the District Judge found in favour of Guinness. The tenant was ordered to give possession of the property and was evicted in April 2018.
At Guinness, we take tenancy fraud seriously. We need to make sure our properties are available only for those in genuine housing need. During 2017-18 we had over 450 tenancy fraud referrals and have gained possession of over 30 properties.
Our teams work hard together to make sure our homes are going to the right people. It’s a victory for Guinness, the community and those important social principles that we were founded on back in 1890.