YOUR £1BN A YEAR BILL FOR MIGRANTS’ HOMES


415,000 new council houses or other publicly-owned properties need to be built in the next 25 years

Wednesday August 17,2011
By Macer Hall, Political Editor

HARD-pressed taxpayers are facing a crippling £1billion annual bill for providing social homes for immigrants, a report warned last night.

Researchers forecast about 415,000 new council houses or other publicly-owned properties need to be built in the next 25 years to cope with soaring demand from the massive influx of arrivals over the last decade. It is equivalent to building 16,600 new social homes for migrants a year, or 45 every day.

Critics warned that Britain faces an unpalatable choice between a vast taxpayer-funded building programme or spiralling waiting lists for social homes in its towns and cities. The expected cost of building new social housing as a direct result of immigration was estimated in a report from the population think tank MigrationWatch.

Sir Andrew Green, its chairman, said: “The impact of immigration on the availability of social housing for British people has been airbrushed out for too long.

“Either the Government must cut immigration very substantially as they have promised or they must invest very large sums in the construction of extra social housing.â€