Met officer sublets council flat

4 May 2011 Last updated at 00:39 GMT Met Police officer Stephan Holt is a part-time property developer and crime-prevention officer A serving Metropolitan Police officer has been unlawfully subletting his council flat, according to a BBC Panorama investigation.

Pc Stephen Holt offered to rent his council property to an undercover reporter at £359 more than he pays Southwark council in weekly rent.

The government has labelled unlawful subletting "housing fraud", which costs the taxpayer at least £1bn a year.

Pc Holt did not respond to Panorama's queries about the council flat rental.

As part of its investigation into social housing, Panorama replied to an advert Pc Holt placed on a website and an undercover reporter went to view the flat.

PC Holt, a part-time crime prevention officer and a part-time property developer who has appeared on daytime TV property programmes, showed the reporter around the flat near Butler's Wharf, close to Tower Bridge in London.

Cash deposit

He offered the flat to the reporter at £450 for the week. Rent on the Southwark council flat is £91 a week.

Panorama paid the rental fee in cash, along with a £200 cash deposit.

Under the terms of his tenancy, Pc Holt should be living in the property and should not be renting it out.

Pc Holt told Panorama's undercover reporter that any post that arrived in his name could be directed to the flat opposite, which Pc Holt owns.

The audit commission believes that unlawful subletting of properties is currently removing at least 50,000 council homes from the system in England, adding to the wider shortage at a time when almost five million people in the country are on waiting lists for social housing.

While showing the reporter around property, Pc Holt also said that he owned a chateau in Bordeaux in the south of France. Pc Holt also owns a property in rural Kent.

The tenant of a council property is not prohibited from owning other properties.

'We can't help you'

With subletting adding to a growing social housing problem and demand outstripping supply, Portsmouth Council is informing new enquirers and many on their waiting list they are unlikely to be offered council accommodation.

"Most people on a council waiting list are never, ever going to get offers of council accommodation", said Pete Diamond, a housing officer with Portsmouth Council.

"I just think the fairest way of doing it is just to be honest and just say to people, 'look, you may have a housing need, you may have all this situation going on but we still can't help you'," Mr Diamond continued.

Panorama wrote to Pc Holt, asking him to respond to the allegations but did not receive a reply. Other attempts to contact him failed.

Panorama contacted Southwark Council about Pc Holt.

Following council investigations, Pc Holt has been issued with a notice to quit the property.

Panorama's Council Houses: Cheats and Victims, BBC One, Wednesday, 4 May at 2100BST and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.

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Council may lose £12m in Iceland

22 February 2011 Last updated at 11:13 GMT The £25m represented 2.5% of the council's total investments Nearly £12m which was invested in Icelandic banks could be written off by Somerset County Council.

The authority had nearly £25m deposited in Iceland's banks when they collapsed in October 2008.

The Conservative-run council said losing £12m was its worse-case-scenario but it was hoping only £2.1m would be written off.

So far it has retrieved £5m from one of the three banks and another instalment is due in April.

The county council said it routinely invested extra cash - mainly reserves for building projects and day to day spending.

The money was spread across three banks - Landsbanki, Glitner and Kaupthing, Singer & Friedlander.

They were Iceland's three biggest banks, but they all collapsed in October 2008.

UK councils had about £1bn invested in them.

The Icelandic bank investments have been called the "thorn in the side" of Somerset County Council by Conservative councillor David Huxtable, the cabinet member for resources.

The council's waiting for a court decision on whether it should be a priority investor to have its money paid back from the other two banks. The verdict is expected in a few months.

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Council budget 'social vandalism'

12 February 2011 Last updated at 12:46 GMT Birmingham City Council says 2,450 jobs will go in the coming financial year Birmingham City Council has been accused of "social and economic vandalism" after revealing plans to cut thousands of jobs.

Leader Mike Whitby said the authority would "play its role" in helping to tackle the national deficit.

He said 4,300 council posts would be cut and 3,000 more transferred into a schools co-operative, amid funding cuts from central government.

But a spokesman from Unison criticised the scale of the cuts.

Roger McKenzie, assistant general secretary of Unison, said the coalition government had "pulled the rug from beneath Birmingham society" and called the council's move "disastrous" for the city.

He said: "The cuts amount to social and economic vandalism and they threaten the economic viability and social fabric of our city."

The city council, which is run by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition, has 18,993 full-time staff posts.

Mr Whitby said that the target of 4,300 posts had almost been met, as 1,807 council employees had already taken voluntary redundancy and a further 1,500 had opted to do so in the coming financial year.

The authority - the largest in the UK - has made 302 compulsory redundancies and is consulting over the remainder of the posts which must be cut.

Increase parking fees

The introduction of schools co-operatives means that council workers in supportive roles in Birmingham schools, including catering, cleaning and caretaking staff, will no longer be employed by the city council.

They will instead be paid directly by schools.

Further savings are to come from plans to privatise adult social care, increase parking fees and remodel youth services.

The details were revealed on Friday in a document by the council.

Mr Whitby said: "Undoubtedly this has been one of the most challenging budgets to plan."

But Mr McKenzie said the council had made a "political decision" to push ahead with cuts that threatened the "very viability" of public services.

Roger Jenkins, GMB regional officer for workers at the city council, said: "Whichever way you look at it the outlook for the employment and the services provided by Birmingham City Council are very bleak."

A final decision will be made in March.

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