The homes for votes scandal was a gerrymandering controversy involving the Conservative-led Westminster City Council in London. In marginal wards, the Council was starting to move the homeless elsewhere, and sell off council homes to groups who were more likely to vote Conservative. On investigation, the policy was ruled to be illegal, and it was revealed that some of the homeless had been rehoused in condemned accommodation. Former leader of the Council Dame Shirley Porter was found guilty of wilful misconduct and ordered to repay £36.1m. In view of her personal circumstances, a payment of £12.3 million was eventually accepted.
Background
The Conservatives were narrowly re-elected to Westminster City Council in the 1986 local council elections, with their majority reduced from 26 to 4. The Conservatives in total only held onto control of the council by 106 votes after Labour failed to gain the marginal Cavendish Ward which was needed to give Labour the majority to take control of the council. Following the election and fearing that they would eventually lose control unless there was a permanent change in the social composition of the borough, council leader Shirley Porter instituted a secret policy known as 'Building Stable Communities', focusing on eight marginal wards where the Conservatives wished to gain votes at the 1990 local council elections.
Implementation of the policy
Eight wards were selected as 'key'. Secret documents showed that these were chosen for being the most marginal in the local election of 1986. Three: Bayswater, Maida Vale and Millbank had been narrowly won by Labour. St. James's, Victoria and Cavendish narrowly returned Conservatives. West End returned one non-Tory, an Independent. Hamilton Terrace saw its Conservative councillors electorally squeezed by the SDP.
In these wards much of Westminster's council housing was slowly renovated and advertised for open-market sale, rather than re-letting when each unit became vacant. Much of this designated housing lay vacant for months or even years before sale. To prevent its occupation by squatters or drug dealers, these flats were fitted with security doors (installed and serviced by a major contractor at £50 per week per door).
A second semi-secretive strategy was the removal of homeless voters and others who lived in hostels and were perceived as less likely to vote Conservative, such as students and nurses, from Westminster. While this initially proved successful, other councils in London and the Home Counties soon became aware of homeless individuals and families from Westminster, many with complex mental health and addiction problems, making an unusual proportion of calls on services in their area. In public, the Council claimed areas and the whole borough was subject to 'stress factors' in the economy leading to a fall in population, locally and overall in the City of Westminster.
Based on the unfair political considerations, these eight wards took priority in high-visibility services for four years before the 1990 whole-council elections: from street cleaning, pavement repair to planting and environmental improvements.
As Westminster City Council found it more difficult to move homeless people outside Westminster so a revised scheme of the programme strongly favoured the rehousing of the homeless into any of the politically safe wards. In 1989 over 100 homeless families were removed from hostels in marginal wards and placed in the Hermes and Chantry Point tower blocks in the safe Labour ward of Harrow Road. These blocks were "riddled" with asbestos, and should have either been cleaned up or demolished a decade before, but had somehow remained in place due to funding disputes between the Council and the former Greater London Council. The heating and sanitation systems in many of the flats had been destroyed by the council to deter their use as drug dens and others had pigeons making nests out of exposed asbestos-containing fibres. Despite a range of preventative measures some had been taken over by heroin users.
Investigation
Labour councillors and members of the public referred this policy to John Magill (the Audit Commission's District Auditor) to check on its legality, and as a result it was ordered to be halted in 1989 whilst investigations continued.
In 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected by a landslide victory in Westminster, increasing their majority from 4 to 38. They won all but one of the wards targeted by the Building Stable Communities policy. Porter stood down as Leader of the Council in 1991, and served as Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991–2. She resigned from the council in 1993, and retired to live in Israel with her husband.
