Council tenants in Brighton were being consulted over proposals to introduce photo ID, which will be part of a new drive to crackdown on tenancy fraud.
The proposal follows calls by tenants to prevent unlawful subletting of homes, council properties being obtained through deception or inherited through succession based on false information.
The Council has a duty to work with tenants to agree robust measures that ensure property is fairly allocated and is not unlawfully sublet. It has improved training for housing officers to identify tenancy fraud and it is running publicity campaigns, including posters, leaflets and articles in tenant magazines, as well as a hotline to report suspected fraud.
With each council officer charged with checking up to 800 properties each, photo ID is being considered as the only way to verify that a tenant is legitimate. It's proposed that tenant photographs would be taken at application or tenancy sign up and verified against formal photographic such as a passport.
Tenants with religious or cultural reasons for not being photographed could be exempted, but would have to provide additional identification when officers visit, in order to help verify their identity.
The cost of introducing photographic tenant identification is approximately £15,000 and this would be met from a central government grant of £30,000, which was received to improve prevention and detection of tenancy fraud.
