At a packed conference in London on Monday, the minister confirmed that primary legislation would be required to make more substantial changes to the scheme that allows council tenants to buy their homes at greatly discounted rates. This would be impossible in the short term, he said.
He said there were no further measures on the issue in the forthcoming Housing Bill, a draft version of which will be released for consultation at the end of this month.
This news will disappoint many housing professionals who had expected changes to the right to buy in the new legislation.
In January, a leaked policy document indicated that the deputy prime minister was planning to follow reductions to the maximum discount levels, announced the same month, with a second round of changes in the Housing Bill. These were to include:
- extending the initial qualification period from two to five years
- extending from three to five years the period within which the discount has to be repaid if the property is resold
- making the discount repayable equivalent to a constant percentage of the property’s resale value, rather than a percentage of the amount actually received.
It is understood the government intends to wait for the recommendations of the low-cost home ownership task force, which is expected to investigate what measures could best be implemented to deal with the haemorrhaging of social housing through the right to buy.
The taskforce, led by Housing Corporation chair Baroness Dean, is to report in the autumn.
The government has also confirmed that discounts are to be cut across 41 council areas by the end of March, rather than 5 March as originally intended (HT 7 March, page 13).
Greenwich council’s request to be included among the councils for which maximum discounts will be reduced from £38,000 to £16,000 has been accepted. Christchurch and Spelthorne councils’ requests to be excluded were also accepted. These changes will come into effect by 27 March.
Source
Housing Today
No comments yet