The homes for votes scandal was a gerrymandering controversy involving the Conservative-led Westminster City Council in London. Having narrowly maintained their control of the council in the 1986 local elections, Conservative councillors initiated a programme of selling off council homes in eight marginal wards, in the belief that owner-occupiers were more likely to vote Conservative than council tenants. Hostels in the marginal wards were closed, with some homeless people moved into condemned accommodation. The policy came to an end after it was exposed on the BBC current affairs programme Panorama in 1989. On investigation, the policy was ruled to be illegal. Former leader of the Council Dame Shirley Porter was found guilty of wilful misconduct and ordered to repay £36.1m. She eventually settled with the council for a sum of £12.3 million.

The Conservatives were narrowly re-elected to Westminster City Council in the 1986 local council elections, with their majority reduced from 26 to 4. The Conservatives in total only held on to control of the council by 106 votes after Labour failed to gain the marginal Cavendish Ward which was needed to give Labour the majority to take control of the council.^[1]: 12 Following the election and fearing that they would eventually lose control unless there was a permanent change in the social composition of the borough, council leader Shirley Porter and a small group of committee chairmen instituted a policy known as building stable communities, focusing on eight marginal wards where the Conservatives wished to gain votes at the 1990 local council elections.^[1]: 19

Eight wards became 'key wards', selected for having been the most marginal in the local election of 1986. Bayswater, Little Venice and Millbank had been narrowly won by Labour. St. James's, Victoria and Cavendish narrowly returned Conservatives. West End returned one non-Tory, an Independent. Hamilton Terrace saw its Conservative councillors electorally squeezed by the SDP.^[1]: 12,19 In the key wards the aim was to sell 250 council homes a year at discounted prices, rather than re-letting them when they became vacant. It was hoped that these designated sales would give the Conservatives an electoral advantage in the next local elections, as owner-occupiers were considered more likely to vote Conservative than tenants.^[1]: 14,20

A second semi-secretive strategy was the removal of homeless voters and others who lived in hostels and were perceived as less likely to vote Conservative, such as students and nurses, from Westminster. While this initially proved successful, other councils in London and the Home Counties soon became aware of homeless individuals and families from Westminster, many with complex mental health and addiction problems, making an unusual proportion of calls on services in their area.^[2] In public, the Council claimed areas and the whole borough was subject to 'stress factors' in the economy leading to a fall in population, locally and overall in the City of Westminster.^[2]

Based on the unfair political considerations, these eight wards took priority in high-visibility services for four years before the 1990 whole-council elections: from street cleaning, pavement repair to planting and environmental improvements.^[2]

As Westminster City Council found it more difficult to move homeless people outside Westminster so a revised scheme of the programme strongly favoured the rehousing of the homeless into any of the politically safe wards. In 1989 over 100 homeless families were removed from hostels in marginal wards and placed in the Hermes and Chantry Point tower blocks in the safe Labour ward of Harrow Road.^[3] These blocks were "riddled" with asbestos, and should have either been cleaned up or demolished a decade before, but had somehow remained in place due to funding disputes between the Council and the former Greater London Council.^[4] The heating and sanitation systems in many of the flats had been destroyed by the council to deter their use as drug dens and others had pigeons making nests out of exposed asbestos-containing fibres. Despite a range of preventative measures some had been taken over by heroin users.^[2]

Both the decision to increase the number of designated sales and the selection of the properties designated for sale were influenced by an irrelevant consideration, namely the electoral advantage of the majority party. I have found that the electoral advantage of the majority party was the driving force behind the policy of increased designated sales and that that consideration was the predominant consideration which influenced both the decision to increase designated sales by 500 per annum and the selection of properties designated for sale. My view is that the Council was engaged in gerrymandering, which I have found is a disgraceful and improper purpose, and not a purpose for which a local authority may act.

— John Magill, District Auditor in his 1996 report^[5]

In July 1989 the BBC current affairs programme Panorama devoted an episode to the designated sales policy. Labour councillors and members of the public raised objections about the building stable communities policy with John Magill (the Audit Commission's District Auditor). Porter and her collaborators abandoned the policy and turned their attention to covering their tracks. ^[1]: 53-56

In 1990, the Conservatives were re-elected by a landslide victory in Westminster, increasing their majority from 4 to 38. They won all but one of the wards targeted by the building stable communities policy.^[1]: 57-60 Porter stood down as Leader of the Council in 1991, and served as Lord Mayor of Westminster in 1991–2. She resigned from the council in 1993, and retired to live in Israel with her husband.^{[1]: xxi-xxii,63-66}

On 26 January 1994, Dr. Michael Dutt, joint chairman of Westminster's housing committee between 1988 and 1990 and one of ten councillors facing the surcharge, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his St Albans home, with papers from the investigation by his side.^[6]

The scandal was the subject of two investigations by BBC current affairs programme Panorama, broadcast on BBC One on 19 July 1989 and 16 May 1994.^{[15][1]: 76} The 1994 programme was prepared and scheduled for transmission on 25 April 1994 – ahead of the local elections which took place on 5 May 1994, in the period of purdah.^[16] Conservative Central Office complained to the BBC and the programme was delayed until after the elections. A Conservative party spokesman denied that they were attempting to censor the BBC and said: "We did point out to the BBC that it seemed curious to us that a programme about a particular London borough is put out 10 days before polling day when London only votes once every four years. We understood it looked into a Conservative borough and not any Labour or Liberal Democrat boroughs."^[17] Peter Bradley, the deputy Leader of the Labour opposition on Westminster council, said: "It is extraordinary that the BBC is pulling the programme as a result of pressure from the Conservative party. If there are fresh revelations, the people of Westminster deserve to know about them before they go to the polls."^[17]

In November 2009 (and repeated in October 2011), BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio play – Shirleymander – depicting the principal events of Porter's time as leader of Westminster City Council in the 1980s, in which she was played by Tracy Ann Oberman.^[18] In 2018, a stage adaptation starring Jessica Martin opened at the Playground Theatre in North Kensington, west London, ran for several weeks.^[19]

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