ANY journalist who has worked in Thurrock long enough will tell you that you are always six feet away from an uninformed conversation about immigration.
However, there is, according to an Equality and Human Rights Commission report no evidence that new arrivals in the UK are able to jump council housing queues.
Once they settle and are entitled to help, it adds, the same proportion live in social housing as UK-born residents.
According to the study, 64% of people who arrived in the UK within the last five years live in private rented accommodation.
Just 11% of new arrivals get help with housing – almost all of them asylum seekers.
