An innovative way to tackle tenancy fraud (The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea v AirBnB Payments UK Ltd)

Article summary

Local Government analysis: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea obtained a pre-proceedings Norwich Pharmacal order for disclosure against a third party who had potentially innocently been caught up in wrongdoing, namely, unlawful subletting. The order required the online short term letting business AirBnB to disclose information concerning financial transactions associated with properties let to social housing tenants in two large blocks of flats. The Council was aware that some of its tenants were unlawfully subletting. The two blocks identified were in popular prime locations and contained a high proportion of key safes for individual properties which gave rise to the suspicion that short term subletting was taking place. The order sought was designed to enable the Council to identify the individual wrongdoers. AirBnB did not oppose the order sought but was unwilling to disclose the information without a court order. Written by Ian Peacock and Anneli Robins, barristers at 4–5 Gray’s...