Boris Johnson has urged officials to revive plans, first announced seven years ago, to extend “Right to Buy” to England’s 2mn housing association tenants.
David Cameron, the former Tory prime minister, first announced the proposals in 2015, claiming that enabling tenants to buy their social homes at a discount would create a new generation of homeowners.
The original Right to Buy scheme, introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, applied to council housing. That scheme was hugely popular, and profitable for those who took part, with 2.6mn homes sold at discounted rates. But most of those council houses were not replaced, fuelling a current shortfall in social housing.
Housing associations are private, not-for-profit companies that have gradually replaced councils as the main provider of social housing in the UK.
After Cameron’s announcement, the government carried out an initial pilot scheme in 2016, followed by a larger pilot in the midlands in 2018 looking at how Right to Buy would work for housing associations.
In 2019, Johnson included the promise of further pilots in his Conservative election manifesto. These have yet to take place.
Officials said that the issue had been sidelined by a bigger focus on increasing housebuilding through a radical shake-up of the planning system, although that initiative has also stalled after a backlash from Tory voters.
A succession of Conservative leaders have sought to revive Right to Buy, with homeowners traditionally being more likely to vote for their party.
The prime minister is keen to shift the public’s focus away from the “partygate” scandal ahead of Thursday’s local elections and demonstrate that his government is focused on policymaking.
Those pushing for it to be extended to housing associations include Lynton Crosby, an Australian strategist who is close to Johnson.
Campaign groups have raised concerns about extending Right to Buy to housing associations because most of the proceeds of the original Thatcher scheme were not ploughed back into building more council housing. As a result, the stock of social housing in the UK has fallen sharply since the 1980s.
When Cameron announced the idea he proposed that there should be “one-for-one replacement” by ensuring that for every home sold another affordable home would be built.
The government’s review of the midlands pilot study found that it had operated “successfully”, with 1,892 tenants buying their own homes.
However, it also concluded that the one-for-one replacement had been “challenging” for housing associations.
Homes sold in the pilot had an average market value of £137,271, the report said. But the average price of a new-build home in the midlands was more than £280,000, it said. “The gap between these prices highlights the extent of the challenge in obtaining one-for-one replacements overall,” it said.
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said on Monday that Right to Buy had already “torn a massive hole” in Britain’s housing stock because only 5 per cent of the homes sold off had ever been replaced.
There were now more than 1mn households stuck on social housing waiting lists in England, she said.
“The hare-brained idea of extending Right to Buy to housing associations is the opposite of what the country needs,” she said. “There could not be a worse time to sell off what remains of our last truly affordable social homes.”
Gavin Smart, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, said the extension of Right to Buy should only take place if there were proper measures to replace the social rented homes lost and to compensate the housing associations. “Home ownership is a legitimate aspiration for government policy but cannot be at the expense of the poorest households,” he said.
