Crime gangs in buy-to-let boost

GANGS are using crime proceeds to buy homes – and getting tenants to commit thefts to pay the rent.

A loophole means gangs can set up a property business without checks, become landlords and launder profits from offences such as drug dealing, say police.

Criminals avoid scrutiny by renting out “exempt accommodation” designed to house people in desperate circumstances, including women and children fleeing abusive partners.

The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners wants action. It said: “We are particularly disturbed by reports that organised crime groups may be acting as landlords, linked to modern slavery and other exploitative practices.”

The properties are exempt from limits on housing benefit or local housing allowance that landlords can claim. For higher rents, landlords are supposed to provide care and supervision as well as housing.

But a lack of controls has allowed criminal gangs to move in, says Sophie Linden, London’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. She told MPS: “The UK’S National Crime Agency has stated that ‘the property market is a route exploited by criminals, particularly in London’.

“The danger is that unregulated non-commissioned exempt accommodation processes and services could be criminally exploited, facilitating money laundering and organised crime.”

West Midlands Police said: “The organised crime groups provide cheap, rundown overcrowded accommodation and take advantage of vulnerable tenants while promoting acquisitive crime as a method for paying rent.”

The warnings came in submissions to the Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee.

Conservative MP Bob Blackman called the evidence “shocking and disturbing” and said the committee’s report will be “quite hard-hitting”.

A government spokesman said it will “close the loophole that allows some landlords to use the system to launder money or conduct illicit activity”. It is planning minimum standards of support for the 106,000 residents in exempt accommodation.