City of London Police has arrested two people over possible corruption in the housing department at Barking and Dagenham Council. <\/p>\n
The force’s domestic corruption unit carried out “multiple warrants” in Dagenham, east London, and Essex as part of an investigation into suspected housing fraud offences linked to the authority.<\/p>\n
It is looking into the allocation of several hundred council properties between November 2020 and December 2024.<\/p>\n
After the five warrants were executed on Thursday, Barking and Dagenham Council and its wholly-owned housing company, BD Reside, said they were working with police on an investigation relating to suspected housing fraud.<\/p>\n
City of London Police said: “Prospective tenants answered social media adverts and were provided contacts as to how they could obtain affordable housing within the local Barking and Dagenham areas.”<\/p>\n
The forcer said would-be tenants “paid fraudsters ‘finders fees’ and inflated rents”.<\/p>\n
Potential victims are being encouraged to come forward and complete a questionnaire as part of the investigation.<\/p>\n
The council’s leader, Labour councillor Dominic Twomey, said: “Now we wait to see what happens as the investigation unfolds, but I would encourage anyone who feels they have information that could help \u2013 no matter how small or irrelevant it may seem \u2013 to come forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"City of London Police has arrested two people over possible corruption in the housing department at Barking and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401613,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-401612","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uk","8":"category-united-kingdom","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115155201184769207","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401612"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401612\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}