European Union Accession State Migrants in Social Housing in England

In May 2007, writing in The Observer, the cabinet minister Margaret Hodge stirred up political debate and prompted a flurry of media coverage with her claims that migrant workers from the new European Union accession states were gaining access to the scarce resource that is social housing at the expense of British citizens. Conspicuous by its absence from Hodge’s comments or the heated debate that followed was reference to any evidence that substantiated such allegations of injustice in the allocation of social housing. This paper fills this void in understanding through the analysis of CORE data. The CORE database details the lettings of 600 housing associations and more than 80 per cent of all local authorities in England – 191,000 lettings in 2006/07. CORE data is collected through the completion of a CORE log as part of the new tenant sign-up procedure. This log includes a nationality question, allowing the number and profile of new lettings to migrant workers from the EU accession states to be analysed. The findings to emerge from this analysis are presented and contrasted against stories of unfairness and injustice in the allocation of social housing. What is revealed is a yawning gap between perception and reality.