Foreign nationals would lose their right to social housing in the UK under a Conservative government, the party has said.
The Tories claim around 230,000 homes would become available as a result of their plan to limit social housing entitlements.
Tenants who do not qualify under the proposed policy would be expected to move out of their homes within six months.
Foreign nationals with settled status, refugee status, or specific humanitarian protections can currently qualify for social housing.
Asylum seekers are not eligible for social housing, unless in exceptional circumstances such as domestic abuse cases.
Under the Tories’ plan, any single person currently living in social housing who is not a UK, Irish or EU citizen would lose their social home. This includes those with or without children.
Anyone with EU settled status would not be evicted.
For future tenancies, UK nationals and those with EU settled status would be eligible, however any new EU citizens without settled status would not be.
Couples, where neither of them are UK or EU citizens, and they do not have EU settled status, will lose their entitlement.
Shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately said: “Making Britain your home should be earned by working, paying tax and integrating.
“It should not come with a free ride on the benefits system. Britain cannot be a cash machine for the world.
“Labour has lost control of immigration and lost control of the welfare bill, and it is British families picking up the bill and sitting on waiting lists.
“The next Conservative government will make foreign nationals ineligible for social housing. Nearly 230,000 homes could go to British families.”
In 2024/25, 88.5% of main householders – the person in whose name the social home is rented – were UK or Irish nationals and 11.5% were non-UK/Irish nationals, according to the English Housing Survey.
There are an estimated 470,000 non-UK and non-Irish citizens living in social housing.
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “This is an unserious, unworkable proposal, copied from Reform, that does nothing to tackle the housing crisis the Tories themselves created.
“People without Indefinite Leave to Remain are already ineligible for social housing, so this policy would primarily affect refugees and long-term UK residents who have contributed to this country but are not British citizens, including NHS staff.
“It would also leave more families at risk of homelessness, while driving up the use of temporary accommodation at the taxpayers’ expense.
“No amount of headline-chasing, or following Reform to the extremes, can hide the damage the Tories did to our housing system.
“The least they could do is acknowledge their failures and apologise.”
In June this year, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said he would evict all foreign nationals from social housing if his party was in power, claiming Britain is currently a “two-tier state against white people”.
His home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said the Conservatives were now “trying to copy Reform UK policy but they still end up betraying their instincts to prioritise foreigners”.
He continued: “Incredibly, Kemi Badenoch’s new policy is to allow tens of thousands of foreign nationals from the EU to occupy British social housing funded by British taxpayers.
“Reform UK will ensure British social housing is strictly for British citizens.
“The Tories say they will continue to give it to foreign nationals while our own people and veterans are left to fend themselves.”
Sarah Elliott, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, described the Conservatives’ proposal as “divisive”.
She said “there are already strict rules on eligibility for social housing” and added: “These divisive plans would brutally kick people out of their homes, including thousands of families and pensioners who have lived in them for decades.
“And let’s not forget that social tenants pay rent, which goes back to the public purse and into society.
“It is completely senseless to ruin people’s lives, drive up homelessness and put extreme pressure on councils.
“The housing emergency is caused by successive governments’ failure to build enough genuinely affordable social homes – not by who accesses social housing.
“This policy does nothing to deliver new social homes, which is what we desperately need.”
By Chay Quinn
