According to recent research hundreds of thousands of Council property is being sub=let by the allocated tenants averaging a yield of £20000 per annum to the original tenant. Surely the local authorities should get to the bottom of this scandal without much difficulty ,if not they could put it out to the private sector to carry ou the investigations. Secondly how much tax due on these illgotten gains have reached the Tax office? Thirdly how much of this rent has been declared before submitting claims for benefit? Is there anyone (Minister) in Government responsible for getting investigations underway vigurously?. It makes me positively angry when I pay Tax so assiduosly to find out that this sort of scam is ignored by the politicians.

he probably read it in the express

I know of a Turkish man who has a council property for his English family, yes he has another family in Turkey. Once he got his council house he then bought for cash, a house for his english family. They moved in to their new house. He kept the council house to rent out to his Turkish employees, who were crammed in like sardines. He isn't paying interest or rent on the private dwelling. He is however raking it in on the rent from his employees. He owns dozens of fast food outlets and has a very large import/export business and runs several very large businesses in Turkey. I think this is the type of person the writer was thinking of when having their rant.

Before anyone says "have you told the authorities". the answer is no. I have spent my life doing that sort of thing and always, without exception, been dropped in it and not supported.

That is why the writer is correct in suggesting the authorities should stop burying their heads in the sand and do something about it. Oh! I forgot, it's not their money they are wasting is it. No chance of anything being done then I guess. As usual.

The simple answer is that these type of investigations are quite labour intensive and costly plus the person benefiting from this type of scam is usually hard to detect.
The government and HMRC find it much easier to tackle the generally stable business/business person who have their own home are fairly stable with 2.2 kids at the local school. It is far easier to turn the 'screws' on this type and get a little extra rather than go through the effort of chasing someone who actually does not care.

£20k does sound a bit on the high-side for the average council property.
But I do think they should investigate this fraud.