“TAXPAYERS face a £1billion annual bill for the next 25 years to provide enough council houses for cash-strapped Britain’s soaring immigrant population...

 

...This is because of the ‘‘relatively high’’ number of non-EU migrants granted refugee status. They now occupy nearly 10% of all council houses.”

 

 

Yesterday the Daily Star, among other newspapers, reported that social housing for migrants would cost the UK £1 billion a year over the next 25 years.

 

The articles were reporting a study by Migration Watch UK which estimated that 415,000 new houses would be needed to accommodate migrants in the 25 years period - the equivalent of 45 every day.

 

At the beginning of its report, Migration Watch UK calculated that foreign nationals currently occupy 8.4 per cent of social housing, or “nearly 10 per cent” according to the Star's interpretation.

 

The think-tank cites as its source for the figure a Department for Communities and Local Government spreadsheet detailing the breakdown in occupation of UK social housing.

 

However, it turns out that these Government statistics don't actually match up with the 8.4 per cent figure quoted by the think-tank.

 

A briefing by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford demonstrates that the correct figure is actually 6.1 per cent. This is based on a total stock of 237,492 social houses, of which 14,570 are occupied by foreign nationals.

At this stage it is unclear where the think-tank acquired the 8.4 per cent figure.

 

A 2.3 per cent difference is not insignificant by any means. The figures show that this difference amounts to the equivalent of 5,379 houses. If this was monetarised, this would amount to a cost of £333 million.

 

The Daily Star's generous rounding of the estimate to 10 per cent widens this gap further. The newspaper seems to be out by around 9,179 houses, or £551 million of housing spending. It seems reasonable to assume that, had Migration Watch reported the 6.1 per cent figure, the Daily Star would have been unlikely to uprate it to 10 per cent.

 

Full Fact have contacted Migration Watch for an explanation, and have been told that a response is being prepared. Until we understand how the group has arrived at the 8.4 per cent figure, we can't say with any certainty if it is accurate or not.

 

What is clear however is that the source cited by the think-tank does not appear to show what is claimed, and any calculations that have been made to reach the figures used are far too opaque for us to understand its working.

 

We will update as soon as we have more information from Migration Watch.

 

UPDATE: Migration Watch has been in touch with Full Fact and we're happy to report that the confusion has been cleared up. The 8.4 per cent figure comes from the English Housing Survey report published in October 2010 by the Department of Communities and Local Government. Unfortunately due to a miscitation, a different measure of social housing by nationality was originally given in the Migration Watch report - the Continuous Record of Lettings also published by the DCLG - which gave the 6.1 per cent figure. Migration Watch have now agreed to correct this.

 

We'd also like to make clear that the monetary values attributed to the difference between these figures are for indicative purposes only, and do not relate to the £1 billion annual cost over the next 25 years reported by Migration Watch. The think-tank used entirely different data to calculate their figure.