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If we’re going to have another 100 years of council housing, Right to Buy has to go

The Right to Buy is having a devastating effect on the availability of council housing in this country and must be scrapped, writes Lee Sugden

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The Right to Buy is having a devastating effect on the availability of council housing in this country and must be scrapped, writes Lee Sugden of @SalixHomes #100yearsofcouncilhousing @LeeSug

If we’re going to have another 100 years of council housing, Right to Buy has to go, argues @LeeSug of @SalixHomes #ukhousing #100yearsofcouncilhousing

"We’re in danger of increased polarisation in communities between those who own their homes, those in social housing, and even worse, those who find themselves homeless" @LeeSug calls for an end to the Right to Buy #100yearsofcouncilhousing #ukhousing

If we’re going to have another 100 years of council housing, Right to Buy has to go

Inside Housing is publishing a number of articles this month to mark the 100-year anniversary of the Addison Act, which paved the way for large-scale council housebuilding.

 

 

This month marks 100 years of the council house.

Following the end of World War I, then-prime minister David Lloyd George pledged to build homes ‘fit for heroes’ – marking the start of the council housing system.

While there may have been public housing built in Britain prior to this, it was the Addison Act of July 1919 that really paved the way for large-scale council housebuilding.

And now, a century since Mr Lloyd George’s pledge became a reality – the council house, or social housing as it is now, is under threat.

It’s not a new threat – it’s a 40-year-old threat brought about by another of our eminent PMs – it is of course Right to Buy.


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Right to Buy was one of the defining policies of Margaret Thatcher’s reign. It was a policy that was widely celebrated by many at the time – providing the opportunity for aspirational working-class folk to own their own home.

But 40 years later, that very policy has had and continues to have a devastating effect on the social housing sector – depleting stock at an alarming rate and compounding the housing crisis.

It may not come as a surprise, but I’m no fan of the Right to Buy. It’s a divisive policy that I’d argue increases the gap in equality between those who have and those who have not.

The policy in practice does not work. Inside Housing research has shown that around 40% of properties bought through the Right to Buy end up in the private rented sector (PRS). There’s nothing in the rules about the Right to Buy to stop someone purchasing their home at a fraction of its worth and then renting it out the very next day – probably not quite the type of ‘homeownership’ Maggie was peddling back in 1979.

Plus, once these properties end up in the PRS, they often deteriorate in quality – I imagine that Right to Buys account for a large chunk of the 30% of properties here in Greater Manchester classed as ‘non-decent’.

For Salix Homes, since we underwent a stock transfer from Salford Council four years ago, we’ve lost 304 properties through the Right to Buy – sold at an average discount of 51.4% of their value. Financially the total lost in discounts is £13.3m, but to society, it’s 304 homes gone from the social housing system forever.

With 6,000 people on the housing waiting list in Salford, where Salix Homes is based, it’s the people in most desperate need who are losing out – the homeless, people in poverty, families on the breadline.

Among our own tenants, we’ve got around 5,800 who still have the Preserved Right to Buy. No one could blame them if they exercised their right to buy, but with a total housing stock of 8,000, the consequences would be dire.

I get the attraction of the policy for the lucky few who benefit from it. Who wouldn’t want to purchase a property at up to 70% less than its market worth? You’ll end up with a mortgage less than rent and an asset worth far more than you paid – it’s a no-brainer. But that subsidy has to come from somewhere, and ultimately that somewhere is the taxpayers’ pocket.

My own family have benefited from it – my mum, sister and grandparents all purchased their homes through the Right to Buy, but having worked in social housing now for more years than I care to remember, I see every day the devastating effect of this policy, and it’s time it was scrapped.

“Who wouldn’t want to purchase a property at up to 70% less than its market worth? You’ll end up with a mortgage less than rent and an asset worth far more than you paid. But that subsidy has to come from the taxpayers’ pocket”

For every property that’s sold to one of the fortunate few, it’s one less available to those struggling to put a roof over their head. We need more social housing to address housing need, yet this is taking it away.

Here in Greater Manchester, mayor Andy Burnham has made tackling homelessness a key priority. Following on from previous initiatives to provide a route off the streets for some of our most vulnerable residents, the Housing First programme has just launched – aiming to provide a place to call home and a pathway to build a better life.

But for such a scheme to be a success, it relies upon a steady supply of properties for people to move into, and while the Right to Buy continues, that supply chain is reducing every single day.

Successive governments have failed to grasp that the answer isn’t just to build more homes. We can’t build them at the same rate we lose them – and there just isn’t the land available.

We’re in danger of increased polarisation in communities between those who own their homes, those in social housing, and even worse, those who find themselves homeless.

If this country is serious about tackling the housing crisis then we need to think beyond supply and look at retention in the one area of the housing market that protects the most vulnerable.

So, as we celebrate 100 years of the council house, the harsh reality is that if we’re to still be here in another 100 years, then the Right to Buy has to go.

Lee Sugden, chief executive, Salix Homes

100 Years of Council Housing: what Inside Housing is doing

One hundred years ago, a piece of legislation led to the birth of council housing. Gavriel Hollander introduces Inside Housing’s celebration of the centenary of the Addison Act.

It is so ingrained in our national consciousness that it is hard to imagine just how radical the idea of local authority built and funded housing must have seemed a century ago. Before World War I, almost all housing in the UK was built by private developers (albeit with some notable municipal exceptions in major cities). Given this, it is unsurprising that both quality and consistency of delivery were variable.

The post-war introduction of subsidies for councils to solve the blight of slum estates was supposed to right a wrong and – in the words of then-prime minister David Lloyd George – provide “homes fit for heroes”.

The so-called Addison Act – the very first housing act passed in this country, named after its sponsor Dr (later Lord) Christopher Addison – received royal assent exactly 100 years ago this month.

It may never have achieved its aspiration of delivering 500,000 homes (something that may sound familiar to modern-day watchers of government housing policy) but it was the start of a movement.

New estates began to crop up across the country, built in accordance with recommendations from the Tudor Walters Report, which was produced to parliament in November 1918. This built on the ‘Garden City Principles’ and suggested a number of improvements to the standard of public housing. These included limiting the length of terraced-housing blocks, mandating a minimum number of rooms and providing indoor bathrooms.

“The post-war introduction of subsidies for councils to solve the blight of slum estates was supposed to right a wrong and – in the words of the prime minister David Lloyd George – provide ‘homes fit for heroes’”

Although the abandonment of subsidy in 1921 and a change of government the following year curtailed the immediate growth of council-built housing, the seed had been sown.

This month Inside Housing celebrates the centenary of the Addison Act with a month-long series of articles looking at how it transformed the social fabric of the country and created the housing sector we know today.

Over the course of this month, we visit four estates, each symbolising a different era of council housebuilding. We also take a look at whether new-found financial freedom for local authorities could be the catalyst for a new generation of estates.

To kick off the series, acclaimed social historian John Boughton visits one of the first estates made possible by Lord Addison’s historic legislation: Sea Mills in Bristol. We then travel to Stevenage to look at how the damage to Britain’s inner cities during the Blitz led to the new town movement and a fresh wave of estates through the 1950s and 1960s.

Martin Hilditch, editor of Inside Housing, takes a trip to Hulme in Manchester to examine how the private and public sector had to work together in the 1980s to deliver a regeneration project, which is still thriving more than 30 years later.

Finally, we go to Nottingham and look at one council with grand ambitions to provide housing to a new generation of tenants.

There may still be myriad challenges to face when it comes to providing good-quality, genuinely affordable housing for those most in need, but without the passing of an act of parliament 100 years ago, the sector we work in today may never have come to exist. That alone is worth celebrating.

To read more about the act, go to: www.insidehousing.co.uk/AddisonAct

100 Years of Council Housing: we want to hear from you

100 Years of Council Housing: we want to hear from you

To mark the 100th anniversary of the act receiving Royal Assent in July, we have a month of special activities planned, including interviews with senior council housing figures, exclusive debate and comment, and investigations into what local authorities, past and present, are doing to help provide housing.

This will signal the start of a stronger focus on local authority housing issues over the coming months on www.insidehousing.co.uk and in our weekly print and digital editions.

We want to hear from you about your local authority is doing to mark the Addison Act and about the housing issues in your area, email: editorial@insidehousing.co.uk

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Click here to read more about our activity to mark the Addison Act

More on the Addison Act

More on the Addison Act

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If we’re going to have another 100 years of council housing, Right to Buy has to go The Right to Buy is having a devastating effect on the availability of council housing in this country and must be scrapped, writes Lee Sugden

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