Farage says Reform government would force foreign nationals to leave social tenancies or face deportation

A Reform UK government would give “foreign nationals” with social tenancies three months to move into private accommodation or face deportation, Nigel Farage has announced.

The policy was revealed in a nearly 7,000-word Substack post by the party leader which alleged that the British state was biased “against white people”.

It marks a radicalisation of the party’s rhetoric on the issue as it heads toward a by-election in Makerfield, where polls suggest it has lost support to far-right Restore Britain as it seeks to challenge Labour’s Andy Burnham for the parliamentary seat.

Going into the last election, the party’s policy on the matter appeared to be focused on new allocations rather than changing existing tenancies, with its manifesto saying foreign nationals “must go to the back of the queue”.

In an interview earlier this year, Reform’s subsequently sacked housing spokesperson, Simon Dudley, told Housing Today that people who already have settled status should not be deprioritised in social housing allocations, but that the status should be harder to achieve.

“Under a Reform UK Government, foreign nationals will not have any access to welfare,” Farage wrote in the article published on Sunday.

“Foreign nationals who are unable to relocate to private rented accommodation after a three month grace period will lose their right to remain and be liable for deportation”.

The term foreign nationals does not have a specific meaning in UK immigration and social housing law, though the Reform UK leader appeared to be using it to refer to those not born in the UK.

Currently, such people generally need to have secured indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in order to claim public benefits and access social housing through their local authority.

To qualify for ILR, an individual must live and work in the UK lawfully for five continuous years, pass culture and language tests, and meet salary and job requirements.

Temporary residents on visas, undocumented migrants and asylum seekers have no recourse to public funds, meaning they cannot access social housing or benefits through the local authority.

Farage’s essay noted that housing associations were “free to allocate homes to those with no recourse to public funds”.

According to the No Recourse to Public Funds Network, some housing associations operate their own allocations list, to which individuals without ILR can apply, but they will need to show they are able to pay the rent as they are unable to claim benefits to cover it.

It also said that 15,000 social tenancies awarded since 2020 were to people who had come to Britain as refugees. Well over a million social tenancies in total have been awarded over this period. In 2024/25, almost nine-in-ten lead tenants given a new social letting were UK nationals, a similar distribution to the year prior.

Census data from 2021 showed that 7% of people living in social housing had a non-UK passport.

Commenting on the new policy announcement, Gavin Smart, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: “Access to social housing in England is already governed by clear legal eligibility and allocation rules, with the vast majority of homes let to UK citizens and priority given to those in greatest need. Allocation is based on citizenship and legal eligibility - not place of birth. It’s important to recognise that many UK citizens - including well-known public figures like Boris Johnson and Joanna Lumley - were born outside the UK.

“Proposals that would remove security of tenure from people who are lawfully resident risk increasing homelessness, placing additional pressure on local authorities and undermining community stability. The evidence is clear that the primary driver of the housing crisis is a longstanding shortage of genuinely affordable homes, not the nationality of those who occupy them.

“We would urge all policymakers to focus on increasing the supply of social and affordable housing, supporting local allocation systems to meet need fairly, and ensuring that housing policy remains practical, lawful and rooted in evidence.”