76% of London’s social housing is used to house foreign nationals.
We can’t find any evidence that backs up the 76% figure London-wide, but data from the 2021 census seems to suggest this figure could refer to a small part of Ealing, which only contains 234 households. The picture for London as a whole looks a lot lower, with 48% of social housing in the capital occupied by people describing themselves as born outside the UK.
Claims that “76% of London’s social housing is used to house foreign nationals” are circulating on social media—but that figure is not representative of the entire city.
Data from the 2021 census suggests this figure may refer to just one small area of London. The census records people who describe themselves as being ‘born outside of the UK’ (rather than ‘foreign nationals’). Although 76% of ‘household reference people’ in a small area of Ealing living in social housing said they were born outside the UK, the figure for London as a whole was much smaller, at just under 48%.
In total, 376,754 ‘household reference people’ who lived in social housing (either through a local council or housing association) in London said they were born outside the UK, compared to 414,205 who were born in the UK. A household reference person is a term used in the census to refer to a person who serves as a reference point to characterise a whole household (which can be one person living alone, or multiple people living together).
Some London boroughs have higher percentages than this. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, when broken down by local authority, Brent has the highest percentage of people living in social housing who were born abroad, at 61%. Westminster and Haringey were also around 60%.
Full Fact asked the ONS where the 76% figure could have come from, and was told it could be for a particular small area used to break up the UK in census statistics (called a Middle layer Super Output Area or MSOA) in Ealing, where 75.6% of household reference people living in social housing said they were born overseas.
But the ONS stressed that this area in Ealing contains just 234 households of all types, including those who may own or rent privately.
Although 83.6% of household reference people in that area, in all types of housing, were born outside the UK, the ONS said over half declare themselves as having a UK identity (referring to being English, Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, British or Cornish), and many may have lived in the UK for a long time.
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This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because the 76% figure is not representative of London as a whole.
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