Housing associations attack Conservative right to buy proposal

Housing associations have reacted with fury to a proposal in the Conservative manifesto to force them to sell homes under a version of right to buy and have questioned its legality.

This right has existed since the 1980s for council homes but does not apply to those owned by associations since they are social enterprises.

The only exception has been sitting tenants in homes transferred by councils to associations, who have kept their right to buy their home.

Some 850,000 households could be eligible to buy, according to the National Housing Federation, the housing associations’ trade body.

Prime Minister David Cameron said the discounts offered to tenants would be funded through the enforced sale by councils of their most valuable homes as they fell vacant.

NHF chief executive David Orr said in a column for the Huffington Post: “The Conservative Party wants to sell assets that don't belong to them, or to the nation. They belong to housing associations which are legally constituted as 'community benefit organisations'.

“To dispose of these assets to individuals is contrary to their legal objectives. To force housing associations to do so would require new law. That would be a law where the government tells a private social enterprise what it can and can't do with the assets it owns.

“Try putting Barnardo’s or Oxfam, or Hotel Chocolat or even Tesco's into that sentence to see how ridiculous that is. Is this the party that wants to nationalise housing associations?”

The Tory manifesto said: “We will extend the Right to Buy to tenants in Housing Associations to enable more people to buy a home of their own.

“We will fund the replacement of properties sold under the extended Right to Buy by requiring local authorities to manage their housing assets more efficiently, with the most expensive properties sold off and replaced as they fall vacant.”

Some of the money raised from these sales would be earmarked to develop homes on brownfield sites.

Gavin Smart, deputy chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: “Extending right to buy to housing associations is not going to tackle the housing crisis – in fact it could make things worse for people on lower incomes who are already struggling to access a decent home at a price they can afford.”

The Prime Minister said each home sold would be replaced by a new affordable one but “we know this is not happening under the current scheme”, Smart warned.

“Most authorities only expect to be able to replace half or fewer of the homes they sell under right to buy.”

Mark Smulian