Reform will get tough on profiteering migrant landlords

Telegraph

12-05-2025

May 1, 2025, will go down as the most important set of local elections in our country's history. The stranglehold the two old parties have had on British politics for a century has finally been broken.
A party that had no MPs and managed to stand candidates in just 12 per cent of the seats up for election a year ago won 31 per cent of the vote share and 42 per cent of the seats. Reform now controls 10 English councils, and counts the Mayors of Hull and East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire among its ranks.
Reform has a walloping mandate to do everything in its power to reverse the tide of anti-British, climate alarmist, pro-immigration ideology that has assailed the British people for decades.
We are realistic. We have no magic wand. The levers of power available to our councillors in local government are dwarfed by those at the disposal of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This is a battle between David and Goliath. But so were the local elections.
Reform's elected officials will display unflinching resolve to heave those levers of powers available to them with all their might.
One arena of battle in which you will see this is that of the dispersal of illegal migrants into local communities at the behest of Yvette Cooper. Make no mistake, this is ground zero of the betrayal of British people.
In an act of Bond-villain wickedness, Section 21 eviction notices are being served on British tenants, including veterans with post traumatic stress disorder, by landlords gleefully gorging on the banquet being served up to them.
That feast comprises seven-year tenancy agreements, 15 to 20 per cent above market rates. So local communities are facing the parachuting in of illegal migrants – often young men from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan – into their neighbourhoods.
British tenants are being turfed out. Those evicted are placed in hotels by councils with no chance of long-term housing. Some boroughs say the wait could be 100 years. And all of this is being funded by those same communities. It is betrayal on a biblical scale, and it makes our blood boil.
Reform has formed a legal team to help our councillors fight back. We have a leading KC, flanked by elite lawyers. All are working free of charge to resist this inhuman agenda. There are many aspects of law which are being wantonly broken by this Government, like the Tories before them. Many migrants are being housed in hotels, which must apply for planning permission to be turned into 'hostels'.
This is a material change of use. Do not let the hostel term mislead you – that's simply a technical planning term. Many of these accommodations are quite lovely four star properties with pools and gyms. There is legal precedent for the battles we will fight on behalf of the British people. Great Yarmouth in 2022 had an injunction upheld and the local community was spared. Nowhere near enough communities have had high agency, patriotic political representatives willing to actually stand up for their constituents in this way. That changed on May 1. It's equally clear that councils have been routinely failing to enforce the myriad of regulations around Houses in Multiple Occupancy (HMOs). This will change.
If you are a landlord in a Reform-controlled council and considering betraying your country by accepting a golden government contract to house illegal migrants in HMOs, you can expect rules to be enforced. Expect inspections to check your compliance with CCTV in communal areas, bin-storage rules, proof of regular PAT testing of electrical appliances and on anti-social-behaviour. Rules are rules. Labour's Cabinet, like the Etonian coterie that preceded them, are insulated from any of these realities. They could not care less.
The deep irony of all this is that Angela Rayner barely goes a week without claiming to be a champion of 'renters' rights'. Labour is set to ban Section 21 next year. Yet today, it's being weaponised to clear out our own citizens for gilt-edged private deals to provide migrant accommodation. Reform stands with British tenants, veterans, and working families – the very people this broken system has betrayed. As Prime Minister, Nigel Farage will lead a rejuvenation of the United Kingdom which has been utterly demoralised by endlessly incompetent and self-hating politicians. Britain can once again be the proud, prosperous and powerful nation it once was.
On May 1, millions voted for Reform because they want us to represent them, to fight for them, locally. We know we are the last stand against the madness that has afflicted this country's corridors of power for decades. Accordingly, the fightback has begun.