A huge row broke out after an Asian family was housed by Wandsworth Council within a week of arriving in the UK, 34 years ago.

Opposition councillors reacted angrily to news they had been given a home ahead of more than 7,000 families on the housing waiting list. Conservative leader D Mallam suggested Wandsworth’s housing department was being advertised as a “soft touch”.

Furious resident, J Fionda, of Garratt Lane, Earlsfield, expressed her anger in letters to the department and then-MP, Tom Cox.

She said: “I appreciate there are people who are worse off than us. I know people who have had to wait in a halfway house for up to three months and yet this family was in one for a couple of nights.

“Maybe if we change our nationality and claim Social Security we can jump the queue.”

The Asian family was temporarily given a detached bungalow in Roehampton Vale while housing officers secured a suitable five bedroom house for the husband and wife and their seven children.

Coun Mallam asked fellow councillors to “imagine the feelings of those on the housing waiting list or the council tenants with urgent need for a transfer when they see newcomers pushing them back in the queue”.

He said: “If I were to arrive in Kenya, Singapore or even Glasgow, I would not know enough to ask a taxi to take me to the town hall and then ask for housing and other hand-outs for free. Nor, I expect, would I get them, or even get past the airport checks.

“Why should our ratepayers, our council tenants and our own badly housed people suffer from actions like this?”

But housing chairman, Councillor D Nicholas, said, under the Government’s immigration policy, the council had no choice but to accept homeless immigrants.

He said the council had already had talks with the Home Office about whether the borough could be given extra resources to “meet such situations”.

Coun Nicholas added: “We are prepared to accept immigrant families so long as we get the resources to do so.

“I can understand why some people on the housing waiting list find it difficult to accept the fact that they have to wait a little longer because of the immigration policy.”

Thirty four years later and the Government last month announced councils would soon be able to take into account “the desire of local people” in framing new housing allocation policies.

The move would mean councils could consider other factors when allocating houses, including how long someone has lived in the area.

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