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Money & Influence

The Housing Giant Housing the Calais Charity for Free

6 min read
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The Desk

Britain’s largest social housing provider — 125,000 homes, more than 170 council areas, a sector built on billions in taxpayer subsidy — is giving free commercial premises to a charity that hands out SIM cards, food packs and hoodies to Channel migrants, including at military bases holding asylum seekers.

The arrangement, reported by the Daily Mail on Monday, is between Clarion Housing Group and Care4Calais: rent-free space at a shopping centre Clarion owns in Merton, south London. Clarion’s own words for why: the charity does “essential work providing aid to some of the most vulnerable members of society”. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp wants it stopped, calling the charity’s work an attempt to undermine the border and the arrangement “a complete racket” — his characterisation, we should note, not ours.

Here is what the public record actually shows about the charity Clarion chose to house for nothing.

The regulator’s own findings

Care4Calais (charity number 1169048, registered September 2016) was the subject of a Charity Commission statutory inquiry opened in August 2020. The Commission’s published report — archived in August 2025 under routine policy, not because its findings were overturned — concluded that there had been:

“serious misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration of the charity by the previous trustee board.”

The detail is on the government’s own website. Between October 2017 and August 2020, £340,092.47 was paid to the founder’s personal bank account, in payments ranging from £2,805 to £20,000, most referenced “[founder] spreadsheet”. The inquiry found no evidence the funds were misapplied — the payments were reimbursements that saved the charity about £3,000 a year in foreign exchange fees — but it found the practice “inappropriate”, noted the founder “authorised her own reimbursements without additional checks”, and recorded that the charity had at times operated without the minimum number of validly appointed trustees. An Interim Manager was appointed in July 2021; the charity paid the £10,200 bill. The Commission’s then-chair, Orlando Fraser, summarised it: “Its funds were put at risk.”

To be clear about the status: this is a regulatory finding — a Charity Commission inquiry — not a criminal conviction, and no misapplication of funds was ever established. The founder, Clare Moseley, who stepped down in May 2023, has defended her record: “I always followed the advice of our lawyers, accountants and auditors.” Her sister, a fellow trustee, handled one complaint about her in breach of the charity’s own policy, the inquiry found. Care4Calais’s trustees have said they take the criticisms seriously and have reformed. The inquiry itself found the charity acted lawfully when it took the government to court over Rwanda — the Commission explicitly noted it does not investigate crime, including immigration offences, and the charity has consistently denied any involvement in facilitating illegal border crossings.

The numbers on the register

Care4Calais’s latest accounts on the Charity Commission register (year ending 30 September 2025) show income of £1,453,518 — £1.42m of it public donations — against expenditure of £1,887,671. The charity is spending roughly £430,000 a year more than it raises. It is, in other words, a donations-dependent operation running at a deficit, being subsidised in kind by the country’s biggest social landlord.

Its own register entry describes its activities as “provision of direct aid and social support to displaced people in the UK, Belgium and in France, as well as advocating for a welcoming and inclusive attitude towards refugees”. The charity’s annual report, per the Daily Mail, records 162,334 items distributed in 2024-25 — including 2,500 SIM cards with six months of free data received “in partnership with Vodafone”, 1,173 Ramadan food packs, 3,765 hoodies and 3,532 pairs of joggers — plus 80 drop-in sessions and 17 large-scale handout sessions at British military bases housing asylum seekers.

The counterpoint

Clarion says it is “deeply concerned by any inference that we are profiteering from the asylum system”, and denies the suggestion that housing refugees and supporting a local charity are connected schemes. Its full response: “Conflating our work to support a local charity doing good work is another example of the toxic reporting which is causing division and unrest in communities across the UK.” Clarion, which operates on a not-for-profit basis, has no Home Office contract to house asylum seekers, though around two per cent of social housing in England was let to refugees in 2023-24 — roughly 4,100 households — and Rob Bates of the Centre for Migration Control argues the pipeline is the point: “Once migrants exit Home Office accommodation, having been granted refugee status, they will almost invariably look to join social housing waiting lists.”

Care4Calais has been asked for comment on the arrangement; its public response to Philp’s criticisms, posted the same day as the Mail story, is that UK politicians are misleading the public about its work.

Take Philp’s framing, take Clarion’s denial, take the charity’s defence — all three are on the record. What is not in dispute is the structure: a taxpayer-subsidised housing giant, a donations-funded charity running at a loss, free commercial premises, and a regulatory report that found serious misconduct and mismanagement in the charity’s recent past. Follow the money. It is all on the public register.

Sources