Vulnerable families illegally ‘dumped’ hundreds of miles away by London councils

Exclusive: Practice that includes women fleeing abuse is ‘ripping at social fabric’ of towns in poorest parts of England

Vulnerable families including women fleeing abuse are being illegally “dumped” hundreds of miles away by London councils in a practice “ripping at the social fabric” of deprived towns, a Guardian investigation has found.

Against the backdrop of a deepening housing crisis, the number of homeless people forced out of London has doubled in the past two years.

Scores of families with children were moved to cheap, sparsely furnished properties in some of the poorest parts of England including Bolton, Blackpool and Hartlepool, according to freedom of information requests.

Charities described the policy as “inhumane” and accused councils of targeting vulnerable refugees who speak little English and have little ability to understand or challenge the move. If they refuse, they are in effect forced on to the streets.

MPs and council leaders said the sudden arrival of dozens of these families was fuelling community division in areas already struggling with long waits for social housing.

Jonathan Brash, the Labour MP for Hartlepool, said it was a “disgrace” and accused London councils of the “dumping of a crisis on to northern communities”.

He added: “It is undoubtedly the case that this kind of behaviour is increasing tension in towns like Hartlepool as local people face massive challenges with housing and other public services. It is ripping at the social fabric of the community I represent.”

Britain’s housing crisis has left many councils battling with an increase in homelessness as well as a severe shortage of social housing and temporary accommodation.

The problem is particularly acute in London, which accounts for more than half of England’s homeless people, as the rates of housing allowance have not kept pace with the cost of private rent. A report in 2023 found that only 2% of private properties in London were affordable to someone receiving housing benefit.

An Albanian woman who fled a sex trafficking gang in Manchester was unlawfully told to move out of her property in Ealing, west London, to a property 260 miles away in County Durham despite being highly vulnerable and having two young children.

When she raised concerns to Ealing council, officers provided the details of two sex trafficking support organisations it said were in County Durham – except one was based in Durham, North Carolina in the US, and the other in Durham, Ontario, Canada.

The woman, who won a high court battle against the council last year, said: “I was crying because I was really stressed. I felt they didn’t care.”

Under the Housing Act, local authorities must “so far as reasonably practical” find accommodation in their borough. If it is outside this area, the council must legally notify the other local authority that they are sending homeless people to them.

However, several London councils have been found by the high court to have acted unlawfully in recent years. Housing lawyers, charities, MPs and council leaders said some were routinely flouting the law.

“We’re seeing more and more councils paying a year or two in rent to a private landlord and doing it off the books,” said the leader of one northern council.

Grahame Morris, the Labour MP for Easington in County Durham, has accused London councils of “coercion” towards homeless families and called for those acting unlawfully to face sanctions. Mary Kelly Foy, the Labour MP for City of Durham, described the policy as “inhumane”.

Some London councils pay millions of pounds to intermediary companies to provide often-unfurnished flats or houses hundreds of miles away, sending families in one-way taxis to unfamiliar places sometimes in the dead of night.

Brash said he had heard of families being “bundled into taxis in the middle of the night with little more than the clothes on their backs” and that the council only heard about it when “they turn up at their door looking for help”. He added: “It’s cruel in the extreme.”

Last year, Croydon council signed a £1m contract with a Derbyshire-based firm called Reloc8, which specialises in moving homeless families out of the capital.

Enfield council has paid more than £894,000 to Reloc8 since August 2023, the Guardian has learned. That year, 94% of Enfield’s offers to homeless families were outside London and 59% were in north-east England.

On its website, Reloc8 claims to have moved more than 400 homeless households out of London – including 180 in a six-month period, nearly one a day, which it described as a 70% increase on a previous six-month term.

The firm advertises that it only requires landlords to “have the minimum of a cooker and fridge freezer” and adds: “In certain cases we may also ask you to provide beds.”

In a statement, Reloc8 said all its properties were inspected to comply with regulations and that it had “many success stories over the years” involving those who had been moved.

In 2024, Reloc8 was found to have moved a woman and her two children 250 miles from Uxbridge in west London to a barely furnished house in a small town outside Darlington the day after she was discharged from hospital. The head of the local Citizens Advice bureau said they had been “left to fend for themselves”.

Croydon council plans to move about 110 homeless households out of the borough under its contract with Reloc8, which began last summer.

It estimates it will save about £5,000 for each placement and will make further savings by ending its homelessness duties to those who refuse.

Council officials raised concerns that the Reloc8 scheme risked “compound[ing] existing disadvantage” for vulnerable people due to the “disruption of support networks, continuity of education, access to familiar health and cultural services, and digital exclusion”.

But the £1m contract was signed after the council agreed to mitigate those concerns by requiring Reloc8 staff to undertake “cultural competence and anti-racism training”, according to official documents.

The total number of homeless families dispatched across England is not known as several London councils do not keep a central tally.

The latest official figures suggest about 1,300 homeless households were moved out of London by councils in the year to March 2025, up from 670 in the year to March 2023.

However, housing charities said the true figure would be much higher because families moved to private rented accommodation – accounting for a significant number of those sent out of the capital – may not appear in the official statistics.

Sophie Earnshaw, a solicitor at the housing charity Shelter, said: “The law is clear: councils have a responsibility to accommodate families who become homeless in their local area – when this is not feasible, they must secure accommodation as close by as possible.

“Instead, some councils are paying private companies, like Reloc8, to move families up to hundreds of miles away from their local area. Against a backdrop of a chronic shortage of social rented homes and eye-watering private rents, it is families who are being left to bear the brunt of the housing emergency.”

London Councils, which represents the capital’s 32 boroughs, said most placements were to counties bordering London but called for Keir Starmer’s government to do more to tackle “unsustainable” homelessness.

It added: “We have met with council colleagues in the north-east to discuss the issues they are experiencing.”

Liz Wyatt, of Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth, said the number of families sent from London to north-east England rose from one in 2017 to at least 38 in 2023 and is expected to have risen further.

“It’s pure cruelty,” she said: “It feels that housing officers target the most vulnerable people who [often] don’t speak English as their first language. It’s really serious and totally irresponsible because refugees are being sent to places where there were racist riots in the streets [in summer 2024].”

Enfield and Ealing councils said they were battling a “severe” housing crisis and denied breaching the Housing Act, saying they always notified other local authorities when homeless people were moved.

Enfield denied targeting non-English speaking people with out-of-area removals, saying it “does not discriminate” against those seeking help.