Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has proposed banning foreign nationals from living in social housing, with existing tenants required to move into private rented accommodation within three months under the party’s plans.
The policy would apply retrospectively and affect people regardless of how long they have lived in the UK, according to Reform UK. The proposal forms part of the party’s wider pledge to abolish Indefinite Leave to Remain.
Writing in a lengthy essay published on Substack, Farage argued that social housing should be reserved for British citizens and outlined a series of wider immigration and housing policy proposals. He also claimed that “anti-white racism” is embedded within public institutions and criticised equality legislation, describing it as a form of “social cleansing”.
The proposals are likely to prompt debate across the housing sector, particularly over the implications for social landlords, local authorities and tenants currently living in social housing.
The plans would have significant implications for both the social and private rented sectors. Social housing providers are already facing high levels of demand, with around 1.34 million households currently on waiting lists for a home. At the same time, any large-scale movement of tenants into the private rented sector could place further pressure on a market already grappling with limited supply and rising rents in many parts of the country.
A government spokesperson said: “Illegal migrants, asylum seekers and migrants on student or work visas are not eligible for social housing.”
“Nearly nine in 10 social homes go to UK nationals and most councils have tough local connections rules in place to ensure housing goes to people who need it most.
“These rules mean people must have a connection to the local area, such as a social care worker or a nurse at a local hospital, in order to even apply for social housing.”
Sarah Elliott, chief executive of the housing charity Shelter, suggested Reform’s proposal would lead to increasing homelessness and put pressure on councils.
She said: “To remove people who are legally settled in this country from their homes is racist and morally wrong. This is another attempt to distract from the real cause of the housing emergency, which is the decades long failure to build enough genuinely affordable social homes.”
Comments (12)
How does Reform pledge to solve inequality AKA the cost of living crisis. This is the real issue at hand.
Illegal immigration costs the taxpayer £5-6bill a year.
What about diet related illness – £40bill a year?
What about the housing crisis – £120bill over 10 years to solve?
A wealth tax (on assets not work) for those valued over £10mill would bring in £15bill a year. What about that?
No, it’s illegal immigrants. Good to have someone to blame other than ourselves for voting lying numpties in continuously. Time for positive change – me into we.
Illegal immigration is an issue for the country, we are a small island with a finite amount of space to house and feed ourselves. If people come to the country with no intention of working or improving the country (according to our standards, not theirs) then we don’t want them.
Politicians need to remember who votes for them. They work for us, not the other way around. Or at least that is how it should work…
Cool, can we kick out all the British born ‘scroungers’ who have no intention of working or improving the country to our standards then?
It’s just that 92% of benefit claimants in Britain class themselves as British, DWP statistics btw- easily verifiable.
So if the issue really is with benefit claim abuse, we should probably start with the highest % probability.
Unless of course it’s totally OK for British people to be claiming benefits and social housing….. But that’s another argument.
Whilst I fully agree that benefit ‘scroungers’ should not live the high-life, I think that is a much trickier issue to sort, as there are people in this country genuinely unable to work, sometime for physical or mental reasons, sometimes it is because they are single parents who simply cannot find work around childcare, or who cannot afford childcare based on what they would be earning. I would not personally class any of those as ‘scroungers’ but from the outside, it can look that way. So we DO need to weed out the ones who don’t want to work, but we must protect those who CAN’T work, and try and help them find a way that they can still contribute to society to the best of their ability, if possible.
Unless we want to create a separate area for those people that we as a society have deemed ‘the dregs’, we can’t kick them out of their legal country. Legally and morally, we can’t. In a dystopian scenario, yes, they are the ones we would have to trim to allow the rest of us to survive (and please note I am talking about the lazy who have no desire to contribute, not the ones who will help as far as they can) but we are not there. Yet. Give some of the current world leaders a bit more rope however, and they’ll hang us all…
Goodness me!
Obviously stupid, sound bite, vote-grabbing, knee-jerk policy-making at its finest. And for a percentage of our population it’s a message that will truly resonate. Not because its sensible, or plausible, or actionable, or reasonable, but because it fits their world view.
In response to a HUGE problem that has been decades in the making, exacerbated by the idiotic decisions of right-wing politicians. And it’s just “more of the same” kind of rubbish that got us here in the first place.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
I’m on board with those just arriving in the country being housed after UK citizens moving forward, however people who have come over to this country and are working and paying taxes, shouldn’t be forced out of the homes they have lived in for years.
I am by no means xenophobic or in agreement with Reform (or MAGA-Lite) but I do feel that this Country needs to look after her own first.
More stupid racist nonsense from the tobacco stained frog faced git. What PRS? There’s been a chronic shortfall in stock for years, and you create a ‘policy’ that will never actually work, just to appeal to frothy gammons like FromRichmond.
What a joke this all is, not one single sensible political party anymore.
Maybe? We have to look at the whole picture. Is it right that a family who have just arrived in the UK be housed before a family who have been waiting for years on a growing housing list. It makes little sense that foreign nationals be housed before our own. My council has a local policy and without this connection folks have been refused a home. However, they spent in excess of £2 million and purchased four luxury 4 bed homes for immigrant families when local homeless families were living in B&B’s.
If you want to look at the whole picture, the question really should be, after we sold off an enormous amount of social housing in the 80’s why have we still not built an adequate enough to replace it over 40 years later? Because that’s a major, if not root cause of the housing issues this country faces.
Why, despite all evidence that it doesn’t work, do we still insist on ‘running the country like a business’ and continually put profits before people.
“Illegal migrants, asylum seekers and migrants on student or work visas are not eligible for social housing.”
“Nearly nine in 10 social homes go to UK nationals and most councils have tough local connections rules in place to ensure housing goes to people who need it most.”
There we go, policies in place to control the ‘issue’ why enact a policy which even a token glance at the details will tell you will make a situation worse. Oh because Gammons gonna Gammon.
Thank you!
Think you’ll find the system is abused by migrants. Just ask the First Lady of Sierra Leone, Fatima Bio (Fatima Jabbe-Bio) who rented a council house in Southwark. Illegals are housed in HMOs via Serco paid for by our taxes. We’re being taken for mugs and you defend them..
If you want to play the odds- 92% of benefit claimants are classed as British- DWP stats. So chances are more British people are ‘scamming the system’ than migrants are- just based off sheer volume.
So can I make a suggestion, rather than pointing the finger at one group of people, we deal with all of it?