Despite Labour’s promise before election in 1997 that Right to Buy would not be retracted, Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott said last week at a private meeting it was ‘daft’ that people were buying discounted houses in London and the South East which undermined his new affordable housing targets.
The upcoming move likely to inflame the Tory party follows the Treasury’s £1.5 billion boost to subsidise affordable housing. The government believes the move can be implemented on a council-by-council basis, avoiding the need to change the law.
Prescott suggested a policy change was likely to be outlined at Labour’s urban policy summit in the autumn and that research had been commissioned into the increasing claims of abuse surrounding the system.
Lord Rooker, government planning minister last week outlined inherent abuses of the current system including private company lending allowing people to exercise their Right To Buy and then sell on for profit. Others buy homes at discount and then let them at commercial market rent.
More than 1.5 million council tenants have bought their homes since 1980. However, in 2001-2000, 53,000 English council properties were sold while 18,000 homes were built for affordable rent, mostly by not-for-profit housing associations.
In London, 11,182 were sold and 3,000 built over the same timescale.
