I am not sure of all the circumstances under which people may sublet but if it's simply a case of moving out to make money or subsidise a mortgage then yes. There are presumably circumstances were sub-letting may be reasonable eg moving to try to find a job in another location but needing a fallback. In those circumstances I wouldn't see a problem provided the matter is cleared with the council (as landlord) in advance.

Simply, yes. In fact I thought it already was an offence.

Taking your scenario, it should be a lot easier to transfer tenancies between council areas.

If you're not sure don't risk it Dally, you had to wait long enough to get housing to place you.

IMO It should be a criminal Offence. I don't think theres any laws yet in place but according to [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/01/subletting-council-houses-criminal-offenceTHIS ARTICLE[/urlthere soon will be.

I am surprised it wasn't already an offence.

New offences may have some minor impact within a year or two. Not as much as the hundreds of thousands of homes made unaffordable to the poor at the stroke of a pen this week. Wonder what the plan is for them.

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jan/01/housing-benefits-cuts-rents-study?intcmp=239benefit cuts will put 800,000 homes out of reach[/url

As with others above, I thought it was an offence already but maybe it's only a civil offence, like a breach of contract.

That would be a "civil wrong", not an offence. Offences are criminal only. And I am sure, in many cases already being committed. For example, obtaining property by deception; or various other fraud related offences. You would be committing fraud by making false statements in your application for the housing. For example that you intended to live there.

The big difficulty would be in getting the police to investigate or the CPS to prosecute. If a specific offence is created, that becomes much easier.

If you are the person named on the rental contract, and you then invite another person to share the property and help out with the bills etc, are you then sub-letting ?

I understand that this proposal is to stop individuals from signing a rental agreement and then never living there at all but letting it instead to a third party, but as always could the legislation catch the wrong people, bad legislation made in a hurry and all that...

No, you're avin a lodger

My bet is that this is another one to add this to the anti-drug legislation mountain.

I wonder how many sublets are for agricultural reasons?

It's an offence of sorts to sublet ANY house you rent without the landlord's consent.

The reality though is if you do sublet your house, you won't go to prison for it, and it's hard for the landlord to actually take as much action as he should probably be entitled to.

At the end of the day it's illegal and undesirable because the landlord has the right to know who is occupying HIS property. But then again, everyone in this day and age has a right to a roof over their head, don't they?

It could also be said that subletting a council house is a worse offence than subletting a private rental because council houses are social, rather than business, projects, so it stands to reason that no-one should make money from them.

I'm torn if I'm honest. Surely there should be one rule across the board, and what applies to council property should apply also to private rented property. But given that the two serve essentially different purposes, it could also be said that any risk you take with buying property to rent out should also extend to taking a risk on who occupies it.

First question then ... what action(s) is/are the landlord limited to?

There's always the baseball bat and several mates approach, but that's not exactly legal.

You're really limited to serving notice on the tenant and pleading ignorance that the tenant has in fact sublet the place.

On reading that, my first thought was why are people earning more than £100k a year in council houses anyway?

it is already an offence, it's a breach of tenancy, think it may be civil as opposed to criminal though.

and you can, in theory, mutually exchange between council areas, the problem is that the allocations policy vary widely between areas.

because you are only assessed once, and once you're in, you can stay regardless (ask Bob Crow)

But it is a bloody nightmare to do, there is no reason why outside of the major metropolitan areas we can't come up with an exchange system that works.

I can give you a bl00dy big reason, politics.

It's been tried before, I worked on it in Glasgow to set up a city wide scheme to be able to transfer between different providers and it all worked fine until various comittees involved and then it collapsed.