|
Location: Wiltshire UK
Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 14,404
|
|
Yep you are right, there are a LOT of people who know the FACTS eg:
Claims that immigrants are given priority access to social housing have been dismissed as a myth by the equalities watchdog.
A study for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that
only 1.8% of social tenants are immigrants who had moved to the UK in the past five years.
Some 87.8% were UK-born. Foreigners who had been living in Britain for more than five years made up 10% of social housing.
The study, based on previously published figures from the 2007 Labour Force Survey, was conducted by the centre-left Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) thinktank.
Its report, commissioned by the EHRC, comes amid heightened concern about gains in recent elections by the British National party (BNP).
The far-right party spread rumours in target seats that immigrants were given precedence in the queue for social housing accommodation.
The IPPR found no evidence of queue-jumping or abuse of the system by immigrants, but warned that those perceptions were widespread in certain areas.
Trevor Phillips, EHRC's chairman, said: "We have to recognise that people's perceptions are powerful, so it's vital that social housing providers and policymakers work to foster understanding about what is really happening on the ground.
John Healey, the housing minister, said the belief that immigrants were favoured in the allocation of council homes was "largely a problem of perception".
"At present, those people with the most serious housing needs get priority. We are not changing that," Healey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"But there is more we can do to give local authorities freedom and scope to give more preference. In some areas, they may want to give people who have waited the longest preference. In some areas, they may want to give preference to people who have moved to take up work.
"They may want, in rural areas, to give preference to those with local connections or their preference may be to reduce overcrowding or attract skilled workers. I am not going to change the rules that mean new migrants don't have a right to sign up to council housing. I am not going to remove the requirement to give priority to those in most serious need.
"But there is more that we can do and more leeway we can give local authorities to be able to respond to particular pressures they face in their area or allow them to give more priority and preference – after they have dealt with the most serious housing need – to those that they want to support."
Healey added: "All of this is no substitute for building more homes."