Claim: The UK government is preparing to deploy asylum seekers across the country, prioritising immigrants over Britons when it comes to finding housing.
Fact: The UK government is not prioritising immigrants over Britons in social housing allocation.
X account @EuropeInvasionn shared a photo (archive) of the UK Prime Minister with the caption:
“🚨BREAKING
UK government prepares to deploy asylum seekers across the country. Immigrants will be given priority over Britons when it comes to finding housing.”
Elon Musk also reshared (archive) the post with the caption: “How is this even real?”
The claim subsequently circulated across various social media platforms, including Facebook where a post was shared with the same caption.
Asylum claims
In July, the UK government announced plans to process the asylum claims of individuals who were left in limbo under the Rwanda scheme. This change allowed asylum seekers to move forward with their lives, but did not mean they are being prioritised for social housing. The focus is on clearing the backlog of asylum claims, not on housing allocation, where 90% of social housing continues to be given to UK nationals, according to government data.
Fact or Fiction?
To investigate the claim, Soch Fact Check conducted a keyword search using the terms “Angela Rayner”, “asylum seekers”, and “housing”. The results led us to a BBC article that outlined key points from Labour Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner’s announcement regarding her party’s strategy to overhaul England’s planning rules. The plan aims to meet the Labour party’s target of building 1.5 million new homes by 2029.
The article does not provide any evidence of immigrants or asylum seekers being prioritised over Britons. Soch Fact Check’s analysis of the plan, as reported in the article, revealed that the focus is on increasing the overall housing supply and ensuring local councils meet targets to provide homes for all residents.
The article added that the planning reforms reclassified certain lands and adjusted housing targets, which aimed to make housing more affordable and accessible to everyone, including Britons.
Another article, published by The Telegraph on 10 August 2024, stated that Angela Rayner scrapped Conservative plans to limit social housing applications to long-term British residents. The Tory proposal, introduced by Michael Gove, “would have restricted social housing to those who had been resident for at least 10 years” and affected many foreign nationals in the queue for a social home, the publication added.
Moreover, Rayner plans to increase the provision of new social homes, while only 10% of social housing was allocated to non-UK nationals in 2022-23, the article stated, citing official statistics. Despite criticism that Labour is prioritising non-citizens over British people, most councils already apply local connection tests, and 90% of social housing goes to UK nationals.
A spokesman for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities told The Telegraph, “The vast majority of councils have already adopted local connection tests and 90 per cent of social homes go to UK nationals. A Reuters fact-check also corroborated this information.
The UK government is also set to fast-track 90,000 asylum applications, potentially increasing the number of migrants eligible for social housing, The Telegraph added.
In August, Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced the UK government’s new measures to strengthen border security, enforce immigration rules and increase returns. According to these measures, which aim to achieve the highest removal rates since 2018, 300 caseworkers will be deployed to accelerate the processing of failed asylum claims. The announcement also declared expanding detention facilities to support the increased pace of removals, stating that 290 beds were added across Immigration Removal Centres.
Additionally, X users quickly corrected Musk for sharing misinformation on the platform, with one user (archive) saying, “This may surprise you, but it’s not real, and that account you’re promoting is very well known for spreading misinformation.
Try and find any law or policy that backs up the claim in that post.”
Another user (archive) said, “Again it’s people with HUGE platforms like yourself spreading misinformation. Have you heard of checking with a credible source? You wonder why people and advertisers are leaving the site… you are part of the problem.”
Virality:
The claim was shared here, here, here, and here on X. Archived here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, it was shared here, here, here, and here.
It was also shared on Threads here and here.
Conclusion: Recent posts on social media claiming that the UK government is prioritising immigrants over Britons, when it comes to housing, are false. The majority of social housing continues to be allocated to UK nationals, with local connection tests often favouring long-term residents.
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Background image in cover photo: Financial Times
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com