AQW 46810/11-15
Mr Samuel Gardiner MBE
Ulster Unionist Party
Upper Bann
Tabled Date: 05/06/2015
Answered On Date: 08/07/2015
Priority Written: No
Question:
To ask the Minister for Social Development to detail the (i) number of Northern Ireland Housing Executive tenants that have sublet their properties, broken down by housing division area; and (ii) penalty awarded in each case for each of the last three years.
Answer:
I assume the Member is referring to unauthorised subletting. The information is not available in the format requested as the Housing Executive introduced a Tenancy Fraud Register in April 2014 to record all instances of tenancy fraud and statistics are not available prior to this period. The Housing Executive advises that it has investigated 64 cases of unauthorised subletting. In 13 cases their investigations resulted in the tenants terminating their tenancies. The Housing Executive has also advised that, at 10th June 2015 where there is some suspicion of subletting, a further 17 cases are under investigation. A breakdown by Housing Executive region is as follows: NIHE Region | Investigations Completed | Properties Recovered | Subletting Cases Under Investigation | North Region | 25 | * | * | Belfast Region | 15 | * | * | South Region | 24 | * | * | Total | 64 | 13 | 17 |
* Information at a level less than 10 is not provided to protect individual addresses In relation to the penalties awarded, in one subletting case (included in the 13 above) the Housing Executive, via the Public Prosecution Service, was successful in obtaining a summary prosecution under the Social Security Administrative (NI) Act 1992 for the defendant failing to tell the Housing Executive of his change of circumstances. The defendant was sentenced to the maximum sentence of three months imprisonment suspended for 12 months. The Information provided in this response is governed by the Principles and Protocols of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. This is enforced by UK Statistics Authority.
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