Figures just obtained from the Office of National Statistics show that foreign national families live in over 350,000 council and housing association properties in the capital while British nationals occupy 1.5 million. That is just under 20% of the entire stock of social homes which are occupied by those who have not been here long enough to obtain British nationality or have not bothered to do so.
These figures add to the growing evidence that the official data on who is being given new social housing lets massively under records the number going to foreign nationals in London. If they were only getting 11% of new lets they could not possibly now have 20% of the entire stock.
Migration Watch UK showed two weeks ago that while official data indicated that at least 11% of new social housing lets in London were given to foreign nationals there were huge gaps in the data. In some London Boroughs over one third of new tenants had no nationality recorded while, in others, only about half of new lets were included in the official statistics. This new data on who is actually occupying the stock of social housing shows the missing data on new lets is hiding the fact that a much larger proportion of social housing lets are going to foreign nationals than we have been led to believe.
Frank Field MP has written to the housing Minister calling for a public inquiry into who is getting social housing and under what criteria.
Commenting, Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of Migrationwatch, said “It seems that being British counts for nothing in the allocation of social housing. We are not suggesting that anyone is “jumping the queue” but it is now clear that the result of a system based almost entirely on need has been to favour foreign nationals. This has been covered up for too long. There must be an enquiry to get the facts straight.”
Notes to Editors:
1 Labour Force Survey looks at households across the UK. This includes data on Landlord type and nationality.
2 The Continuous Recording of Sales and Letting (CORE) is a national information source funded jointly by the Tenant Services Authority and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). It looks at new social housing lets.
