A LONDON Labour council was accused yesterday of lying to its residents after announcing it would replace 4,000 council homes with privately rented new builds.

Earlier this year, a Haringey Council officer was recorded promising locals that demolished estates would not be sold to private developers.

But in a cabinet meeting last week the council agreed to transfer social tenants to “a housing association currently known as a private registered provider.”

Defend Council Housing (DCH) spokesman Paul Burnham told the Star the move was “brazen social cleansing.”

“We thought what would happen would be that council tenants would become tenants of housing associations, which are rapidly privatising themselves.

“But then we found out it’s a venture company and it’s private tenancies that are being proposed.

“This is a brazen social cleansing move. They are Tories — they are Labour Party members but we refer to them as Tories.”

Mr Burnham added that his campaign and local union branches are demanding the decision to privatise, taken despite promises to the contrary, be called in for scrutiny.

DCH holds a sound recording of a consultation meeting with Haringey’s head of strategic planning Matthew Paterson.

Mr Paterson is heard addressing concerns about privatisation of the council’s housing saying: “There’s 16,000 existing stock. We are talking about renewing that.

“You have certainly got to pay for it somehow, and that will be paid for through cross-subsidy, by uplift of market housing, but that is to replace the social housing stock.”

He says later: “Owned by the council. The council wishes to maintain its housing stock.”

Residents are appealing to new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, London mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan and local MPs David Lammy and Catherine West to “call these rogue council members into line.”

The shamed council recently spent £86,000 on the design of a new logo that residents described as “ugly and unnecessary.”