Don't get me started. Councils are dishing out tons of money and not even checking where it's going to. How do I know? I'm involved in a housing benefit fraud case myself. In 3 years the council did not once check that the tenant was living where he said he was living. If that was a private company it would be a different matter completely.

There are so many things going wrong. Council tenants never see the money directly from housing benefit. It is done internally if you are on housing benefit. Some unscrupulous private landlords do fiddle the system. There was a case more than a decade ago in London where the landlord was claiming housing benefit for more people than the properties could legally occupy. None were living there. Then you get landlords who basically are slum landlords like the ones in the Panorama program, who simply look at benefit claimants as people who can be fleeced easily. If properties were seized that were in a bad state there would be a short crisis but the councils could repair them and put their highest needs people into them. Banks and building societies might moan but they might also demand much higher deposits from buy to let landlords so that the landlord has much more at stake. They could also demand annual inspections to maintain the property is well maintained.