The chief executive of Brighton & Hove Council is to ask the government to scrap Right-To-Buy to help ease the crisis in social housing in the area.
Online publisher Estate Agency Today.co.uk reports that Penny Thompson will ask Chancellor George Osborne and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, if the policy can be scrapped in Brighton – as well as asking for more funding to help local council tenants move into new private housing.
Right-To-Buy was a flagship policy of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative
government in the 1970s/1980s, which is now being blamed in part for the current shortage of council homes across the UK.
Many councils are now starting to buy back former council homes which come onto the market, including Islington council in north London, where property prices have spiralled upwards in the last ten years.
In Brighton, 6,000 council homes have been sold off under Right-To-Buy – and as many as 1,000 former council properties are now being rented privately.
Bright & Hove Council – controlled by the Green Party – first approached the government in 2012 asking for Right-To-Buy to be scrapped in Brighton.
Council tenants receive up to one-third off the value of their council home once they have lived in it for three years – and up to 50% off the market value if they have lived there for 20 years or more continuously.
Since Right-To-Buy was introduced, it is estimated that as many as 2.5 million council homes have been sold off.
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