By Keith Cooper, investigative housing journalist

Let’s face it. 2024 was not a great year for housing. So what if Kier Starmer demands the “biggest increase” in social and affordable housing in a generation?  The latest government figures show supply is in freefall while homelessness figures break records again and again.

The number of new homes started in England plunged from 71,770 in 2022/23 to just over 43,400 in 2023/24. In London, the collapse is even more startling with starts plummeting from 26,400 to 3,160 over the same period. It doesn’t bode well for Labour’s ambitions.

With supply headed in the wrong direction, what other options do the government have? One part of the answer can be found in some exclusive research for Housing Quality Magazine into tenancy fraud that will be published next week.

Unlike the depressing figures above, we’ve found that the number of homes freed up for homeless families by council fraud busters is on the up. In the three years between 2021/22 and 2023/24, almost 4,000 social homes have been recovered from fraudsters.

Last year, the capital’s councils alone freed up 843 social homes. At the same time, just 1,897 new ones were started by the city’s builders. Three London local authorities each recovered more than 200 of their homes from fraudsters in the three-year period covered by the research. Last year, Hillingdon Council recovered more social homes than were built in the borough.

It all goes to show that efforts to combat tenancy fraud can boost supply significantly. With the recent collapse in starts, this point is even more prescient. As previously argued, building more social homes is not the only sure route out of the housing crisis.

While these fraud-busting figures are positive news for social housing supply on the surface, a deeper analysis uncovers hugely wasted potential.

It finds a chasm-like divide between councils which plough resources into tenancy fraud detection and those that don’t spend a penny. To absolutely nobody’s surprise, local authorities with dedicated fraud-busting teams recover scores of social rented homes while those without any recover none. It is clear from the analysis that many more council properties can be recovered.

But the analysis also points to an even greater potential of ejecting fraudsters from homes run by housing associations. As our previous investigation revealed, HAs appear to have a miniscule focus on fraud-busting.

Most housing associations reported zero tenancy frauds to the government’s Regulator of Social Housing in 2022/23, according to figures obtained under a Freedom of Information request. Only 204 tenancy frauds were officially logged by associations that year compared with 1,372 by local authorities. As a result, housing associations told the regulator they had suffered a £127,433 loss from tenancy fraud; councils told us they saved £64m that year by fraud busting.

Something seems very wrong with HAs and their regulator’s approach to counter-fraud. With associations now in charge of two-thirds of the country’s housing stock, they should be freeing up many more homes than local authorities.

Of course, fraudsters don’t care who owns the homes that they’re scamming.

But it seems clear from this analysis and our earlier investigation that many are getting away scot-free when they just happen to be targeting properties owned by associations.

So, if Mr Starmer and his fellow ministers want to avoid more years of record-breaking homelessness figures they could do far worse than crack down on tenancy fraud. With a little encouragement, housing associations could make thousands more homes available for homeless families and save councils millions of pounds on temporary accommodation bills. Many councils could do with a gentle push too.