Cash to leave the country

• Published in: The Guardian (London)
• Main Author: Connolly, Jerry
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Manchester (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 12.11.1993
• ISSN: 0261-3077

Tower HA, a subsidiary of one of Britain's largest associations, the South London-based Quadrant Housing Trust, has one of the country's largest TIS allocations. Director Steve Walker said: "We moved 180 households under the scheme last year. Thirty-one per cent were black or ethnic minorities and about half a dozen of these bought homes in other countries. That means about 10 per cent of ethnic minorities who used the scheme did so to emigrate." Under TIS rules, housing association tenants can go anywhere in the UK or abroad. Cash payments for tenants moving out range from pounds 8,000 for tenants living in areas with low-cost housing to pounds 16,000 in London and the South-East. The costs of repatriation under the 1971 Act scheme have been put at little more than pounds 50,000 last year - an average of around pounds 1,000 per person. The TIS scheme, assuming even a conservative 1 per cent take-up for people emigrating, will over the past two years have made grants totalling more than pounds 1 million to people unwilling or unable to stay any longer in the UK.