A London council has been accused of “bribery” and “social cleansing” after it was revealed that it had offered council tenants up to £7,000 to move to Birmingham.

The Tory-led council of Wandsworth in south London sent a letter to social tenants last week informing them that they could have “access to a garden” and “a private driveway” if they chose to move away from London.

It said it would pay tenants £3,500 for a two-bedroom property, £4,000 for a three-bedroom property and £5,000 for four- and five-bedroom properties, as well as help with removal costs up to £2,000.

The letter stated: “The properties are mostly houses with a low rental charge and normally come with access to a garden and in some instances have a private driveway. This is just an opportunity and entirely your choice. So if you find the property is not suitable for your family your transfer application will not be affected.”

The letter was brought to the Guardian’s attention after Will Martindale, the Labour parliamentary candidate for Battersea, said a distressed woman knocked on his door to tell him she had received it. “She was really upset. The council is her landlord and she trusts them. How would you feel if you got a letter like this from your landlord?” he said.

OUTRAGEOUS from Wandsworth Tories. One woman told me she felt "not wanted" in #Battersea. Makes me so angry. pic.twitter.com/G9D9ReYeC1 — Will Martindale (@WillJMartindale) May 5, 2015

Other Labour figures have since accused the council of “bribing” residents to move out of London. Shadow London minister Sadiq Khan told the Evening Standard: “Wandsworth council have been caught bribing residents to move to Birmingham. These policies rip communities apart and amount to the social cleansing of London.”

The policy is part of Wandsworth borough council’s new moves and mobility scheme, which focuses on rehousing people deemed to be occupying council homes they do not need to live in, particularly due to size.

A report, published by the council in January, identified that the number of council tenants rehoused into smaller accommodation in the borough increased from 85 in 2012-13 to 116 in 2013-14. This, it said, was due to the removal of the spare room subsidy, a government change to housing benefit entitlement policy known as the bedroom tax.

But the council noted that only 13% of the 1,012 tenants affected by the bedroom tax intended to downsize, suggesting it has had little effect on freeing up larger properties from tenants, who have chosen to “pay and stay”. This figure, it added, does not include pensioners, who are exempt from the tax.

As a result, the council has increased the previous budget for “under-occupation” moves in the borough almost fivefold, from £214,000 per year to £1m, and set a target to move 600 tenants over the next three years – triple the previous level of activity.

“It’s clear from the council’s published plan that they want to focus on ‘under-occupiers’ who are not affected by the bedroom tax,” Martindale said. “This can only mean they are looking to target older people. It’s just not right for the council to apply financial pressure to older people and our most vulnerable residents to leave the area.



“This policy will just widen the divisions we see in our local community. Our borough is being hollowed out by inequality. Over the past two years, every income group has shrunk except for the extremes: those earning less than £15,000 a year and those earning more than £70,000 a year.”

Simon Hogg, a Labour councillor in Wandsworth, added: “It’s wrong to pressure local families to leave Battersea to move to Birmingham. The real answer is to build more homes local people can afford to rent and buy. These really are some of our most vulnerable tenants, you can either help them improve their lives or you can try and ship them out of the area and get some different people in.”

Hogg said a council tenant with a secure tenancy for life might not be able to keep up the rent on a privately rented flat in Birmingham. He added: “So you become homeless and that becomes the problem of Birmingham council.”

He also pointed to what he claimed was the failure of the Tory’s right-to-buy scheme, under which 21,000 homes were sold in Wandsworth between 1981 and 2013. Last year, the council sold off 128 of its properties and built only two, he said.

Wandsworth defended its scheme, saying it had been in place for many years and that other London boroughs had similar policies. A spokesperson said: “What this does is provide choices and incentives for tenants in larger properties to hand them back so that they can be used to provide new social-rented homes for families on waiting lists who may be living in overcrowded conditions and need a bigger property. Offering a financial incentive is one of the ways in which tenants who don’t need such big homes can be encouraged to give them up.

“As the letter makes crystal clear, it is not compulsory and no one is forced to leave, but some residents are quite happy to move out of London because they may have family connections in other parts of the country or are looking to make a fresh start outside the capital.”



The council said three local families have so far taken up the offer to move to the West Midlands.

In January, Wandsworth council was also condemned for its policy of housing homeless families in cities such as Leicester, Portsmouth and West Bromwich. The leader of Sandwell council in the west Midlands, Darren Cooper, said at the time Wandsworth was treating people “like cattle” and moving them around the country to cut costs.