Housing Pressures and London Boroughs; What's the Reality?

All of Thanet is well acquainted with the narrative around housing in Thanet being used by London Boroughs; but what's the reality, and what do we need to know and understand?

This began in November 2025; and in February 2026, this is what I know.

If you’ve lived in Thanet for any length of time (or perused our social media for less than five minutes) you will be very familiar with the ongoing narrative that London Boroughs are purchasing all of our housing.

Every single time new council housing is announced, comments instantly appear stating that all the houses will be going to London boroughs; and this isn’t a new narrative; it’s just louder now because firstly, people are finally seeing developments that were planned for years going up, and secondly, social media can amplify that narrative as much as anyone wants it to.

And it does.

I want to be very clear at this point that much of this narrative links to classism, racism; a whole host of ‘isms. If you come to Thanet, and you love it, I love you; this is my home, and I’m proud of it, and I genuinely do not care how you came to be here. But at the heart of the narrative for many people is a desire to understand how housing is provided and how our community is built, along with an ongoing need for all of us to understand how social housing is developed and allocated.

Curiosity is important; it’s how we map our world, and how we look to understand the needs of our community; and it’s with this in mind that I’ve been working on a little project.

Population movement is fascinating. The focus here, for some reason, is always on London when people consider internal migration to Thanet; but the last Office of National Statistics figures show that only 12% of those who moved into Thanet moved from London; leaving 88% of movement from outside London.

Historically, I am one of those. Both my brother and I are from care and adoption backgrounds; we moved to Thanet from Birmingham when my Dad found a job down here. I came from Castle Vale Primary to Bromstone many, many years ago now (37, to be precise) and mine is not an unusual story; people move here for work, for family, for relationships, and just because Thanet is beautiful; and those movements come from all across the country and even internationally. I know Dutch, French, German and Ukrainian families who live and work here; and although we are still by no means a very diverse culture in Thanet, there are thousands of individual stories, with individual reasons; many of them absolutely fascinating.

I love Birmingham and Thanet; but Birmingham is very much part of my identity, and Thanet is very much my home. So many of us here have come from different places and backgrounds; but we all came because life brought us here, or because we saw something we loved in this place; and in that we are entirely united.

So, as a DFB (Down From Birmingham) I decided to try and find some facts relating to the narrative that London Boroughs are directly placing residents here; because it’s something that’s been talked about for so long now, but without any factual evidence (for clarity, “My cousin’s friend works for X Council and says they’ve bought hundreds of properties here but no I won’t name them or give any context”) is not factual evidence).

Several months ago I sent a simple FOI to all London Boroughs.

It read as follows.

“Please could I have the details of the following:

The number of your residents who are/have been placed within the bounds of Thanet District Council in long term accommodation in total

The number of your residents who are/have been placed within the bounds of Thanet District Council in temporary accommodation in total

The number of your residents placed within the bounds of Thanet District Council in the last two years, in temporary accommodation

The number of your residents placed within the bounds of Thanet District Council in the last two years, in long term accommodation

The number of your residents placed within the bounds of Thanet District Council in the last ten years, in temporary accommodation

The number of your residents placed within the bounds of Thanet District Council in the last two years, in long term accommodation

The number and names of agencies and registered and approved providers you work with who have placed your residents within the bounds of Thanet District Council.

Thank you for your time.

Yours faithfully,

Helen Whitehead”

The choice of wording here was very deliberate. I wanted a ten year span, and a two year span to see if there were any increases in placements as people were saying; and I wanted to know if there was a difference in TA placements and permanent placements, as well as wanting to know if any boroughs were using third party providers to place within Thanet (temporary accommodation is often provided by separate registered providers; but those households would still be coming from the Council, and understanding the link between providers and Councils is important; as we’ll come to later).

It is worth noting that Councils do have a legal duty to notify other Councils if they are moving any residents into the area of another Council. Thanet has never received any such notification of any significant movement.

The results, in detail, along with links to all my individual FOI’s, can be found at the end of this document.

But for brevity, I think giving the overall number is important at this point. We have full information from 27 Boroughs (I am still waiting for several replies; the requests were first put in in November), and the total number of households placed across the last 10 years seems to be the most logical place to start.

So, across 27 boroughs, the number of households placed within Thanet over the past decade (in temporary and long term accommodation) is a maximum of 44 households.

The reason there is a maximum, rather than an absolute total, is that for figures below five councils can choose to give “less than five” as an answer to preserve the anonymity of the individuals involved; two councils, I believe, chose to do this, which means that the total could be anywhere between 38 and 44, but with a maximum of 44; so that is what I’ve recorded.

This works out at an average of 1.6 households in total placed in Thanet in the last decade by all of the boroughs who have responded.

Many of these placements are historic; Hillingdon Borough Council has owned a property on Cliftonville seafront for several decades; these placements make up the majority of placements, with 8 households being placed by Hillingdon in Thanet over the last decade, in property that they already own.

Many boroughs have placed no households directly; the rest are a smattering of results between 1 and “less than five”; but clearly, nowhere near the thousands of households that social media insists exist here; so what is happening?

Although ONS does not back this assertion up, there is still a perception that London Boroughs are buying up properties within Thanet.

Which means that these results can mean one of three things:

They’re somehow incorrect (unlikely)

That we really have only had a maximum of 44 placements in ten years

That something far more complex is happening.

So let’s take a look at it.

Part of the repeated narrative is simple; although council housing is only ever used for those on the Thanet housing register (to repeat in capitals, COUNCIL HOUSING IS ONLY EVER USED FOR THOSE ON THE THANET HOUSING REGISTER) there is still an external fear that council and affordable housing is being “taken” away from local households. The reality is that this is completely untrue.

Any Council housing built goes directly to those on the Thanet housing register.

Where it gets more complicated, however, is around Housing Associations and Registered Providers.

Not so way back in the mists of time Council house building was not only actively undermined and underfunded, but Councils were directly encouraged to sell off their housing stock to Housing Associations. This even happened in Thanet.

The reasoning behind this was an extension of the political beliefs at the time, which stand in stark contrast to my own. The thought process back then was that the private sector would deliver housing more cheaply and effectively, and that shrinking social infrastructure was a good thing, that provided both income and a reduction in service costs for the Councils disposing of housing.

The reality has turned out to be somewhat different for many Councils and many residents.

As per usual, when attempting to make things simpler and cheaper, the opposite happened; housing that was previously directly owned and monitored by Councils, with access and understanding and control of their own stock, now became something that still had to be monitored by the Council’s private sector housing departments, but with no direct control over how housing was used, and far more complex processes involved to try and resolve housing issues and problems.

Housing Associations and Registered Providers are still held to a higher standard than the private sector, and we have some exceptional ones; but we also have a huge amount of variation across quality and size of provision, with many areas having very little control over the Housing Association allocation processes.

So, the situation that many Councils were left with was no direct control over any housing, and no ability to produce any (as many had shut down their Housing Revenue Accounts; we still have one, which is why we have been able to mobilise and produce and acquire as much as we have done over the past two years) but still with a desperate need to find affordable homes for their residents.

Housing Associations and Registered Providers stepped into this gap, both with previous council stock and stock they built or purchased; and as they were for a long time exempt from having to offer the right to buy, they had the ability to grow stock; while without HRA’s, funding or an exemption from Right To Buy, Councils struggled to maintain stock, let alone grow it.

This has brought us to today’s situation, where in many areas Councils don’t provide accommodation at all; it is only Housing Associations and Registered Providers that produce and acquire accommodation, which means that housing your local population is often left reliant on whether an RP’s business plan works for your area; which is why we have seen so many areas unable to sell their Section 106 (affordable) housing, as RP’s aren’t purchasing them if the homes don’t work for them financially, and that is where we have stepped in as a Council to deliberately purchase any s106 properties that aren’t taken up by RP’s; which not only stops affordable housing from being lost, but also increases council stock, and our ability to support residents directly. This is also an indicator that London Boroughs are not active to the extent described by some in our area; because bluntly, if they were, then there wouldn't have been any unclaimed S106 units available for us to purchase.

We have excellent relationships with many of our Housing Associations and Registered Providers; but the movement away from council provision and national social housing provision has meant that a) HA’s and RP’s need to keep their business model working, and also prove to the Social Housing Regulator that their organisation is financially viable and b) that Councils only have direct input into how HA’s and RP’s allocate properties if Local Lettings Plans and Nomination Rights are in place.

This is why on Kent HomeChoice you will see multiple housing providers represented, as Home Choice advertises all affordable properties available to Thanet residents; some of those will be Council, and others will be Housing Associations and Registered Providers, and rent can differ significantly depending on who is providing the housing.

The impact of the loss of Council Housing was felt in cities first; with London being an excellent case in point. Without their own stock to provide for residents, Boroughs were often dependent on HA’s producing social housing; if they couldn’t do that because land was too expensive, then the housing registers grew, and grew, and grew. And with that so did the costs for temporary accommodation; as people still have to be housed, even if you don’t have a long term home for them; and temporary accommodation provision is far more expensive (unless you do as we have done, and set up an in house temporary accommodation service).

The cost of providing for TA and homelessness in London is now £2.5 billion per year as the need for long term housing can’t be met, and the cost of Temporary Accommodation within London has risen by 75% in the last five years; as the vast majority of Temporary Accommodation is privately owned, which means that unlike the Council Housing model, which remains static aside from yearly approved increases (CPI +1), private TA costs are determined entirely by demand in the market. And the demand is high.

So areas of high demand grow, Councils are ever more desperate to find solutions for residents; HA’s and RP’s expand, and move into areas where land and property is cheaper; TA providers buy up cheap property in low cost areas, and across the country households are placed out of area, away from their family, community and connections, as there is simply no availability where they live; and wherever this happens, it moves the same process on to the next “cheap” area.

Housing Associations have control over who they place and where they place them; and even where arrangements are put in place with HA’s so that Councils can allocate placements, the percentage of properties that HA’s are allowed to allocate themselves generally grows over time; meaning that what begins as a placement solely from a local Housing Register can, over time, as people move on or vacate properties, become a development solely determined by the HA or RP.

So if, for instance, you are a Housing Association in London, with full control over your stock, a logical business method for growth is to buy or build properties in a cheaper area, offer residents currently in London Boroughs support to move into the new, cheaper properties, opening up your London based properties to more households from the housing register, and growing your business at the same time.

This is not an uncommon business model; and it is also one way we could potentially account for either perceived or real growth in movement from London; but not from London Boroughs directly.

However, this brings us back to the recent ONS data, which shows that only 12% of those moving into Thanet are from London; and that includes everyone moving from London, not just moves within HA’s and RP’s, which would make actual growth in movements low at best. ONS records where people have moved from; so this is an accurate and useful source.

So, what do we do (if anything) and how do we find out more?

As stated at the beginning, it genuinely makes no difference to me how people find Thanet or end up here; I am one of those immigration stories. If you want to be part of Thanet, I will completely support your decision to be so. But simultaneously (and what drives many of the negative external narratives) it is also important to know how our housing market and allocation works; and currently, even with the very best Housing Associations and Providers, we still have organisations providing a public service, on behalf of Councils, who are somehow still not open to Freedom of Information requests; which creates more opacity, more confusion, and more distrust, as affordable housing is, unsurprisingly, a very important topic in Thanet.

Things that we have done to make active changes within the current system include

Increasing Council production to the point where we have acquired nearly 500 properties in two years (up from 18 per year over the last decade)

Prioritised in house temporary accommodation to bring residents home, with 76% of those placed out of area now back home in Thanet

Altered our Housing Strategy to ensure that local residents are prioritised, with anyone still in the care of another authority not being able to join our Housing Register

(and on a personal note)

Sent out far too many FOI’s and spent months chasing them to work out what the actual figures are for our area, rather than those appearing on Facebook

Written to Central Government to request that Housing Associations and Registered Providers be open to FOI, as they are providing a public function.

Written to Central Government to request that as well as the duty to notify other Councils of placements in their area, that we also institute a requirement for Councils to notify other Councils if they are intending to purchase in their area.

I will, of course, update this as the remaining FOI’s come in; but as it stands currently, over the past decade, London boroughs have placed a maximum of 44 households in Thanet; and our ability to work out the unknowns within the private sector is wholly reliant on those providing a public service being open to the same information sharing procedures as Councils are held to.

I’ve not written this to divide; the opposite. I’ve worked on this to put some actual facts and figures out there, to make it very clear that the narrative that London Boroughs have been placing here directly in huge numbers is demonstrably false; but the questions remain in the unknowns of private provision.

The full figures and FOI responses are below; I hope that this has been worth your time and consideration, and I very much hope that this information is useful, and leads to less division and stereotyping of individuals and areas. Council and Housing Association tenants already face a huge degree of negative stereotyping and discrimination; and Thanet is, and should be, a sanctuary for those that need one, without pre judgement. That is within all of our abilities to provide.

Meanwhile, as a Council, we will continue to produce as much Council Housing as possible, and continue to support local residents at a time of great need within the local housing market.

Barking and Dagenham:

Total Placements: 0

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/numbers_of_permanent_and_tempora/response/3232028/attach/html/3/Response%20all%20information%20to%20be%20supplied.pdf.html

Barnet Homes:

Total Placements: No response.

Bexley:

Total Placements: 4

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/numbers_of_permanent_and_tempora_3

Brent:

Total Placements: 1

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/numbers_of_permanent_and_tempora_4/response/3247207/attach/html/3/Brent%20Council%20response%20to%20FOI%20IRC%2072512%20N2J0X6.pdf.html

Bromley: