'Britons have a right to know if council houses will be refurbished and given to asylum seekers - the Home Office doesn't,' Patrick Christys says

GB News Reporter
Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:00:28 +0000

The Government is refusing to tell us about the true scale of illegal immigrants being given new council houses.

GB News submitted a Freedom of Information request, asking the Government to tell us which local councils were going to be involved in a £500million scheme to revamp council houses or build new ones, and then put asylum seekers in them.

Now we think you have a right to know about that. We've seen a string of rapes, sexual assaults and murders committed by some asylum seekers recently.

We also have loads of British people, including military veterans on a housing waiting list.

TRENDING

Stories

Videos

Your Say

Just desperate, desperate for new homes. We think it is in the public interest for our viewers and our listeners to know if your local council is planning on doing up a load of properties in your area and shoving a load of new arrivals in there.

So we approached all 350 local authorities. Only 154 categorically ruled it out, which means 196 of them might be involved.

So we know that Brighton and Hove, Hackney, Peterborough, Thanet, Powys. They've all expressed an interest at the end of last year.

Barnet, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole, Cheltenham, East Riding of Yorkshire, East Suffolk, Folkestone and Hythe, Medway, Moray, North Devon, Oxford, the Highlands and West Oxfordshire have also explored participation.

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole requested further information before making a bid. East Suffolk and Melton were also interested.

The reason I've rattled off that list there is because I suspect that many of you are watching and listening right now will be in those areas and you might not have been told about it. So there we go.

So we went to the Home Office with a Freedom of Information request and asked them which local authorities had now been shortlisted, invited to participate in this scheme or confirmed as being part of this asylum seeker scheme and they are refusing to tell us.

They did confirm that they hold all of the information.

So they are, in my view, shamelessly trying to cover it up.

The department cited what is called section 43.2 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to exempt telling us about it on the grounds that it would or would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any persons.

BRITAIN'S BORDERS CRISIS - READ THE LATEST:

Senior Labour minister brushes off Christopher Hope grilling over Home Office 'cover up'

Armed smuggling gang caught by GB News brandishing AK-47s

Home Office 'covers up' number of local authorities wanting to put asylum seekers in council houses

The Home Office told us: "If we disclose the information to you, this would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of both the Home Office and those companies with whom the Home Office enters into contracts.

"We've therefore concluded that the balance of public interests identified lies in favour of maintaining the exemption.

"This is because the overall public interest lies in ensuring that the Home Office's ability to protect its commercial competitiveness and relationships with its current service providers is not prejudice."

I mean, come on. The Home Office has basically said that their right to protect their own commercial interests, whatever they may be, when spending taxpayers money on housing, asylum seekers in your local area outweighs your right to know about it.

This is just like the Bell Hotel case, in Epping, where Labour argued that their duty to house asylum seekers outweighed the rights of the local people who didn't want them there.

I can't be the only one who thinks the real reason for not telling us is because they think if the public knew the full truth, we'd kick off. This is exactly why the Pakistani rape gang scandal was covered up for decades.

Because apparently, if we knew the full scale of it, then it would have been bad for community cohesion.

It was ex Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, who opened the door to housing asylum seekers in council houses in August 2024, reportedly abandoning plans to prioritise long term British citizens over illegal immigrants.

Now, some numbers for you here. A staggering 107,000 people were recorded as being housed in the asylum accommodation in December 2025.

More than 30,000 were being housed in around 200 asylum hotels, each tenant costing the taxpayer £53,000 a year.

Some 68,500 legal migrants have now arrived on British shores in small boats in Keir Starmer's first 20 months in power, which is apparently an average of 110 a day.

They must think we're stupid. We know where they're going to put them. We know. In social housing, and we know that they're going to have to build more houses to accommodate them, but they won't tell us the truth about it.

They'll refuse to answer a Freedom of Information request instead.

Now, at the same time, you've got the BBC conveniently doing a drama about this, how someone who was given too much information about illegal immigrants from the Home Office by asking repeated Freedom of Information requests, turned out to be a radical who wanted to kill illegals.

I mean, come on. Like, seriously, it's not the first time the Home Office has been accused of trying to cover things up to GB News.

We asked them if the Britannia Hotel in Canary Wharf was going to be used for asylum seekers, because videos emerged of tourists not being allowed in.

No. No way. No. That hotel. What do you mean? That hotel there? No. No asylum seekers in there.

Right. So I think personally that you have a right to know if council houses in your area are going to be refurbished and used to house asylum seekers.

Apparently the Home Office does not.