Residents on Havering Council’s social housing waiting list will not be forced to move into homes outside the borough, the council confirmed today.

It follows news that Newham Council, in east London, planned to move some of its poorest residents as far away as Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire - 160 miles away.

Newham Council said it had written to 1,179 housing associations across the country in an attempt to find accommodation for the 32,000 families on its waiting list.

It blamed the crisis on rocketing house prices in the Olympic borough and the Government’s housing benefit cap.

A spokesman for Havering Council said: “Havering residents will not be moved outside the borough.”