Nigel Farage has given an indication of how Reform would approach the housing market with a pledge to prioritise local residents over foreign nationals, who would be moved into the private rented sector.

In a policy essay on his new Substack newsletter, Farage says a Reform Government would require migrant households living in social housing to find accommodation in the private rental sector within three months.

Operation Restoring Justice

He writes: “Foreign nationals who are unable to relocate to private rented accommodation after a three-month grace period will lose their right to remain and be liable for deportation under Operation Restoring Justice.”

Farage says the policy would form part of a wider overhaul of housing priorities.

He describes the allocation of social housing to refugees as an “absurdity” and says almost 15,000 social tenancies have been handed to refugees since 2020.

Farage claims that around a third of social tenants in London were born outside the UK and Ireland, and argues that social housing policy has helped to “redistribute the nation’s stock of social housing away from the White British populations who originally inhabited these areas”.

Veterans and long-term local residents will be preferenced.”

He says: “Residency and preference requirements for social housing will be used to ensure that veterans and long-term local residents will be preferenced for social housing, with exceptions only for groups like domestic abuse survivors and care leavers.”

Farage does not, however, explain how the private rented sector would accommodate potentially large numbers of households required to find alternative housing within just a three-month timeframe.