🚨🚨🚨 BARNET COUNCIL: £57.7 MILLION IN HOUSING GRANTS. 426 PROPERTIES ACQUIRED OR PLANNED. I've been investigating how much public money is being committed to housing programmes that include Afghan and Ukrainian refugee resettlement. The figures from Barnet Council's own records are quite incredible. ROUND 1: £10.533 MILLION • Grant funding towards 249 homes at Colindale Gardens. • 55 properties used to accommodate Ukrainian refugee households. ROUND 3: £13.740 MILLION • Funding transferred towards acquiring 51 properties. • Nine designated for Afghan resettlement. • The remaining 42 for general temporary accommodation. ROUND 4: £33.486 MILLION • Indicative government funding for another 126 homes. • 21 specifically designated for Afghan resettlement. • Ten of those Afghan properties must have at least four bedrooms. TOTAL: £57,759,000 IN GRANT FUNDING ACROSS THE THREE ROUNDS. 426 PROPERTIES ACQUIRED OR TARGETED. Of these, 85 are explicitly identified as having housed Ukrainian households or being designated for Afghan resettlement. The remaining properties are not exclusively refugee housing. And that's before considering the separate Home Office asylum hotel arrangements. Barnet reported FIVE Clearsprings-operated asylum hotels accommodating 1,508 people in February 2025. That figure had fallen to 382 hotel residents by June 2026. Meanwhile, Barnet forecast an £11.873 million shortfall in its wider temporary accommodation budget for 2024/25. The £57.759 million figure includes future indicative funding, not just money already spent. The question is simple: how much public money is ultimately being committed to refugee resettlement housing, how many homes will it deliver, and what will the total acquisition and borrowing costs be?

🚨🚨🚨HACKNEY COUNCIL: £95 MILLION IN HOUSING COMMITMENTS. AND THE TAXPAYER IS PICKING UP THE BILL. My latest investigation into Hackney Council has uncovered the extraordinary scale of public money being committed to housing acquisitions, temporary accommodation and refugee resettlement. Here are the numbers. 🏠 £51.42 MILLION in government housing grants identified across LAHF Rounds 3 and 4. 🏠 £44.3 MILLION in initially approved council borrowing. 🏠 198 PROPERTIES planned for acquisition, including 19 specifically designated for Afghan resettlement. 🏠 £6.7 MILLION in Round 4 government grants earmarked for just 14 Afghan resettlement properties. 🏠 43 PROPERTIES purchased for temporary accommodation between March 2024 and March 2026. The council admitted it did not record whether those homes had been occupied before purchase. And that is before we examine the asylum accommodation system operating in the borough. According to June 2026 Home Office figures: • 373 people receiving asylum support. • 266 accommodated in hotels. • 46 in other contingency accommodation. Meanwhile, Hackney Council forecast £28.8 MILLION in net temporary accommodation rental expenditure for 2025/26. And here is what makes these figures particularly remarkable. Hackney already has more than 7,850 households waiting for housing, while over 3,700 households are in temporary accommodation. We are looking at almost £96 MILLION in identified grant funding and initially approved borrowing across just two housing-fund rounds, while the council continues to face an enormous homelessness bill. So the central question remains: How much has actually been spent, who has received the money, and how many homes have been delivered? I have submitted Freedom of Information requests to establish precisely that. This is just one London borough. There are hundreds more councils to investigate.