Boris Johnson: 'Right-to-buy' in London is insanity if we don’t build more council homes

 
Uncertain: Boris Johnson has cast doubts over plans to extend the right-to-buy scheme (Picture: Reuters)
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Boris Johnson has cast fresh doubts over controversial Tory plans to extend the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants.

He has warned it would be the “height of insanity” to use the proceeds to build more homes outside London when the capital has a housing crisis.

The Mayor said he did not want to see councils “deprived at a rapid rate of their housing stock” if more homes were not being built to replace them.

The Queen’s Speech set out plans to allow England’s 1.3 million housing association tenants to purchase their homes with the same discounts offered to council tenants.

Local authorities will be forced to sell their most expensive properties as they become vacant, which the Tories estimate would raise £4.5 billion a year to pay for the proposal.

But Mr Johnson told the London Assembly: “To make this policy work it has to deliver more homes. It would be the height of insanity to use the proceeds of council homes sales in London to help build more homes outside, because it’s in London where we have a housing crisis.”

The Mayor had previously warned that extending right-to-buy in this way could be “extremely costly” to London.

He downplayed his criticism after the Tories announced the policy before the general election. But Mr Johnson now says: “I wouldn’t want to see councils in London deprived at a rapid rate of their housing stock which is one of their fundamental assets.

“Nor would I want to see housing associations deprived too rapidly of their homes which are fundamental to their credit worthiness and their ability to borrow and to build more homes.”

Labour has warned that the policy could see more than 23,000 of the capital’s social rented homes sold off, leaving thousands of Londoners on housing waiting lists.

A survey by the Local Government Association, Chartered Institute of Housing, and the National Federation of ALMOs found only half or fewer of homes sold under the existing right-to-buy for council homes had been replaced.

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