Crown Court upholds suspended jail sentence given to solicitor for illegally subletting his council home

A solicitor has failed in an appeal against a suspended jail sentence for illegally subletting his council home.

Rahand Raza, aged 39, received the suspended jail sentence following a joint prosecution brought by Lewisham Council with Lewisham Homes in May 2018.

Raza then chose to appeal against the sentence to Croydon Crown Court.

The council said the defendant had been living and working as a solicitor in Birmingham while he illegally sublet his council home in Lewisham for more than three years.

Lewisham reported that the judge in the Crown Court had stated this was not trivial in light of the profit he made on a monthly basis. Raza had also applied for the ‘right to buy’ on the tenancy.

Raza was convicted under the Prevention of Social Housing Fraud Act. The case was heard at Bexley Magistrates’ Court on 23 May 2018 and Raza received a custodial sentence of 12 weeks, suspended for two years.

He was also ordered to pay legal costs of £5,000 and to pay back the unlawful profit of £3,496.

Summing up, the judge made it clear that illegal subletting was a serious problem that impacted on Lewisham Council and its residents.

Raza appealed his sentence but the application was dismissed and the sentence upheld in its entirety at Croydon Crown Court last month.

The details of the conviction have been passed to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

Lewisham Homes’ Tenancy Audit Team was first alerted that the property at Rawlinson House, Lewisham might be sublet after people were seen moving out of the property.

Detailed enquiries were then undertaken by the council’s Anti-Fraud and Corruption Team, which established that the property was being illegally sublet.