How London dumps its council housing tenants on the unsuspecting Home Counties
London councils with deep pockets are syphoning off their social housing problems to the Home Counties, leaving thousands outside the capital trapped on waiting lists.
Communities say it’s piling pressure on local schools and services and warn that offering local homes to the highest bidder is creating a housing crisis.
Newham Council signed a lease for Anchorage House, an eleven-story converted office block in Chatham, Kent, late last year – removing 81 potential homes from Medway Council’s provision. The spacious, fully-furnished flats overlook the River Medway and are located just a five-minute walk from the town’s bustling centre.
Medway currently has around 480 families waiting for temporary housing. In Newham, the number is 10 times that – hovering at around 5,000.
While Medway can afford to pay around £35 to £50 a night for temporary accommodation, London councils such as Newham can afford roughly double that – between £70 and £80 a night. That’s a difference of nearly £1,000 a month per flat, or £886,950 a year across the entire building.
Residents told The Telegraph they had no idea London families were starting to be moved in. One worker at a homeless charity, upon hearing what was going on, said: “So they’ve just offloaded their housing problems on to us? Unbelievable.”
Sitting next to him was a bag of potatoes he said he was about to deliver to a family struggling to make ends meet who had just been moved out of temporary housing.
A 73pc increase in out-of-borough placements
Anchorage House is managed by Theori Housing, a middleman for landlords and London councils with offices near Epping Forest – 43 miles away from Chatham.
Councillor Naushabah Khan, who oversees housing for Medway council, said: “The first we heard of this was when the beds were being moved in – we were never approached or given an opportunity to discuss options for Medway.”
The council is now trying to negotiate with Theori Housing in an effort to allocate some of the flats to Medway, and take them away from Newham.
The management firm was able to bypass the local council because the block falls under “permitted development rights”, which allow landlords to change the use of buildings without planning permission – applications for which go through local councils.
A Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities spokesman said: “Local authorities should only place households outside of their local area as a last resort. Where this cannot be avoided due to supply, local authorities have a legal duty to notify new areas to support access to schools and employment.”
A Freedom of Information request showed that Newham sent 4,022 people into emergency housing outside its borough in 2023 – up from 2,327 in 2022, a 73pc increase.
Some families were sent as far as Manchester, Sheffield, and Dudley in the West Midlands. Those sent to destinations in the South outside London have ended up in Chichester, Dartford, Maidstone, Southend-on-Sea, Thanet, Rochford and North Hertfordshire – as well as Medway.
A national problem
This isn’t just a Greater London problem – other major cities that are overwhelmed by their temporary housing waiting lists have looked beyond the limits of their own boroughs to house growing numbers of homeless constituents.
In January 2023, the Local Government Association (LGA) published a best practice guide on what it calls “out-of-area placements”.
In it, the LGA says the problem “has increased over a number of years” because private rents have soared and the number of council homes has continued to fall.
The average UK rent has risen 7.2pc in the last year, adding £960 to the average annual bill according to property portal Zoopla. Meanwhile, the Right to Buy scheme has resulted in a net loss of 24,000 social homes since 1991.
‘Our schools are already at capacity’
Councils such as Medway are now urgently asking the Government to review its permitted development rights policy which is taking powers away from local councils and giving them to commercial-turned-residential landlords.
Ms Khan said that being so close to the capital, Medway is feeling the “pressures [of homelessness] from London boroughs who are able to pay more than us for accommodation, creating real pressures in our local housing market”.
She added: “It also results in burdens on already stretched council services including schools, some of which are at capacity.
“We can’t be expected to take on additional pressures. It’s deeply frustrating and the Government needs to do more to…look at the impact out of area placements have – ensuring that appropriate funding is allocated to councils which are adversely affected.”
One thing Chatham locals have noticed since the arrival of London families to their high street is the overspilling rubbish and the sudden lack of car park spaces.
A suited and booted local tax adviser, whose shopfront sits next to Anchorage House, said: “All these black bin bags out the front aren’t good for business. It’s just ugly. And parking spaces – there aren’t any now all these new cars have started appearing. There’s parking under the building [Anchorage House], but they’ve fenced it off for some reason.”
‘You can’t just pick people up and put them somewhere else’
On the edge of the historic city of Canterbury is a network of cul-de-sacs now home to more than 140 families from the London borough of Redbridge.
In 2016, the London council controversially won the lease for ex-military homes at the Army’s redundant Howe Barracks site and started sending its tenants 60 miles away to east Kent.
The council came up trumps in a bidding war for the properties, enraging a defeated Canterbury City Council which called on the LGA for a change in legislation.
Eight years later, London families continue to call Canterbury their home. Ironically, in that time Canterbury has added its name to the ever-growing list of authorities sending people on its housing register to other districts.
Reflecting on what unfolded in 2016, former Canterbury council leader Simon Cook said the issue of sending tenants to distant lands “doesn’t make sense to anybody”.
He added: “People aren’t boxes of cornflakes. You can’t just pick them up, put them down somewhere else and hope they behave the same.
“Economically there is a cold logic about it, but sending people 60 miles away makes life hard.”
‘People had their houses and cars egged’
The Telegraph visited the Howe Barracks site, as well as the area surrounding Anchorage House in Medway, to gauge opinion from neighbours living next to the London families.
Around 30 homes on the estate are privately owned by Canterbury residents, with their gardens backing on to properties housing Redbridge tenants.
“People had their houses and cars egged and some had front doors kicked in, it wasn’t nice to begin with,” one long-term private resident said.
“Some things were vandalised so there was a fair bit of trouble to begin with, but it’s calmed down since. Rubbish is still a problem as people don’t seem to care. It’s left on the streets which then blows around.”
One resident told us they installed cameras on their property to deter anti-social behaviour, while others complained of groups blaring out music at 2am in a children’s play area.
But another local said: “I’ve not had any problems with them. All I’ve ever had to do is throw a football back over the fence from my garden.”
A London Borough of Redbridge council spokesman said “decades of underfunding” from central governments has meant local authorities own very few homes that can be used for social housing.
The average family now has to wait over 16 years for a three-bedroom property, the council said.
Redbridge said it is building 600 new homes on existing council-owned sites across the borough, having secured £20m from the Greater London Authority.
But even with these additional homes, the council said there is “just not enough” for the demand it is facing. This is why temporary accommodation in Kent was sought as a solution.
The spokesman added: “When people move outside our borough into Redbridge Council-owned properties, we work closely with partner organisations and agencies to support families across a number of service areas, such as employment and finding schools for children, and we provide on-site resettlement officers to support residents on the estate.”
‘Some of these people will be on licence’
Councillors have also noticed a lot of smaller scale but “cumulatively significant” temporary placements from London councils popping up in Kent.
Roger Gough, leader for Kent County Council, calls it “pepper potting”. He explains that this is where landlords with individual properties – as opposed to big developments – work with management firms who fill their properties with council tenants.
“This may well build up a bit of concentration in some areas. These people are more likely to have vulnerabilities, so their impact on the health and police services is likely to be disproportionate – though it is hard to track.
“Some people are on licence or have situations which require them to keep a distance from others. This will undoubtedly be placing a pressure on our services.
“What you’re seeing is a spillover of pressures, shortages and high costs in London into areas like Kent. This only exacerbates shortages and pressures across the county.”
A Newham Council spokesperson, said: “Councils up and down the country are having to face up to an acute lack of housing availability. Rather than competing, Newham Council has been working closely with Medway since securing the accommodation.
“We have offered a number of homes, at a subsidised rate, to Medway residents. And we have arrangements in place to support our former residents now living in Medway.
“We have an ambitious housing delivery programme underway in Newham to build over 6,500 new homes. And we have invested £100m to meet our statutory requirements in finding temporary accommodation for those most in need.”
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