National Hunter, an application fraud prevention firm, has reported that its partnership with the National Anti-Fraud Network (NAFN) has prevented more than £6 million in fraudulent Right to Buy and Right to Acquire applications since 2017. The figure has since been revised upward in the release itself to nearly £8 million in total, reflecting an expanding scope that now covers Covid-19 business grant fraud, shared ownership fraud and subletting abuse alongside the original scheme.

The service operates through a referral gateway that allows local authorities and housing associations to pass suspicious applications to NAFN. The network then reviews the submissions and, where relevant, shares intelligence securely with National Hunter, which runs retrospective searches against its database of mortgage application data. Findings are returned to NAFN and, where appropriate, shared with mortgage providers. The circular flow is designed to connect the financial services industry with public sector investigators without breaching data protection obligations.

Forty-eight councils have used the service to date, with roughly 100 enquiries processed annually. The partnership was awarded the Public Sector Counter Fraud Award 2026 for Public-Private Partnership Excellence, and expanded in scope in 2020 and again in 2025.

Why the timing matters

The announcement coincides with the UK Government’s revision of the Right to Buy scheme, which changed eligibility and discount thresholds earlier in 2026. Any adjustment to the scheme that makes the discount more or less attractive to applicants typically moves fraud risk in tandem; larger discounts historically correlate with a rise in speculative or dishonest applications, while tighter eligibility rules can shift fraudsters toward more elaborate cover stories.

Mark Astley, director of NAFN Data and Intelligence Services, said the partnership “has enabled organisations to prevent fraud, save millions of pounds and ensure that much-needed social housing remains available for those who genuinely need it.”

Market and regulatory context

The service sits at a specific intersection of financial intelligence sharing and public sector accountability that has attracted increasing regulatory attention in the UK. The Digital Information and Smart Data Act, which received Royal Assent in 2025, expanded the legal basis for cross-sector data sharing in fraud prevention contexts, a framework that partnerships like this one were built to anticipate. The FCA‘s Financial Crime Guide also encourages financial institutions to engage with public sector bodies where data can be shared lawfully and proportionately.

For financial institutions, the commercial incentive is straightforward. Mortgage providers that receive intelligence through NAFN and National Hunter can avoid funding purchases that are either fraudulent in their application or likely to become contested assets. The reputational and provisioning cost of lending against a property involved in a Right to Buy fraud dispute is material.

More broadly, public-private data-sharing consortia are becoming a recognised model in UK counter-fraud infrastructure. Cifas, the fraud prevention membership organisation, and the Insurance Fraud Bureau operate on broadly similar principles: aggregating data from multiple participants to identify patterns that no single institution could detect alone. National Hunter’s extension into the public sector, using the same retrospective search methodology it applies in mortgage fraud, is a logical extension of that model.

Dave Rossi, managing director of National Hunter, described the underlying principle as “responsibly sharing intelligence across sectors” to stop criminals from using legitimate lenders to commit fraud against the public purse. The next step, based on the release, is continued expansion into further fraud typologies as they emerge.

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