Home cheats keep it in the extended family

Families have been deliberately packing their homes to claim overcrowding and get a bigger council house, forcing waiting-list rules to be changed to combat abuse of the system.

Councillor John McCann said the changes are to make best use of limited housing stocks during the recession.

And they include giving the council powers to refuse priority for families who need one or two extra bedrooms, where they believe overcrowding has been caused intentionally.

He said: “The Government has changed some rules and we have to accommodate them, so we decided to look at the whole scheme.

“First of all we looked at people putting in applications and clogging up the system, people who were applying for half a dozen or a dozen houses then rejecting them all. Now they can only apply for two at a time or have two refusals before they drop down the list.

“Some people are dragging in relatives or grandparents to get overcrowding to get a bigger house, then they disappear.

“The bottom line is some people are basically abusing the system. We have also looked at what other authorities have done and we are trying to make it easier for registered social landlords, such as housing associations, to swop people around more.

“For example there may be someone in a First Choice Homes family council house who wants to move to sheltered accommodation provided by social housing.

“We want to make it more flexible, and we are trying to work together so we can help each other and move people around, making maximum use of our housing.”