Derby Homes partner with Coactiva to power social housing tenancy fraud purge

Derby Homes Limited has signed a deal with Coactiva, part of the Callcredit Information Group, to access financial and residency intelligence data to crack-down on tenancy fraudsters. 

Derby Homes is a non-profit making organisation responsible for managing, maintaining and improving 13,800 social homes owned by Derby City Council. Derby Homes will use Coactiva’s ThreeSixty Online tool to investigate cases of suspected tenancy fraud and identify exactly who is living at a given address. 

There are currently 1.6m people on the social housing waiting list in England. Identifying and tackling the minority of tenants that commit fraud allows for individuals to be given a permanent home and taken off the waiting list much more quickly. 

Jenny Veater-Smith, Housing Management Trainer at Derby Homes said: “Social housing tenancy fraud occurs when a tenant provides false information to ‘jump’ the housing queue or fails to use their allocated property as their main place of residence.   

“Derby Homes is committed to fighting tenancy fraud and has already introduced new procedures to validate the identity of new tenants when they move in to a house.  ThreeSixty Online allows us to take action against fraudsters by understanding exactly who is living at the property and whether an individual owns another home that has not been declared at the point of application. A number of cases of illegal subletting have already been detected using ThreeSixty Online.” 

Lee Birch, Business Development Manager, Coactiva said: “Derby Homes is a good example that social housing tenancy fraud including illegal subletting, is a widespread problem that occurs right across the UK, not just in London and South East England. 

“ThreeSixty Online will give Derby Homes instant access to powerful information via a cost-effective and easy-to-use system.”