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Manchester City Council unveils plans to help associations buy back Right to Buy homes
Manchester City Council will introduce a new policy which will see them offer money to housing associations to help them buy former Right to Buy homes.
Under the policy the council will consider using Right to Buy receipts to help housing associations that would like to buy back former council homes but have identified a funding gap between the cost of acquiring a property and the rental income it will receive.
Currently councils are offered the chance to buy back former Right to Buy properties, or offer it to another social landlord, if the home is being sold within 10 years of the original purchase.
Manchester Council will now commit to offering these homes to a housing association within 48 hours of receiving a notification of the opportunities to purchase.
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Housing associations, which will agree with the council the areas they are interested in buying properties in, can then either purchase the property or return it to the council with an appraisal which shows there is a funding gap.
If the council decides to fill the funding gap it will be on the condition that the home will be let at affordable rent level and the council will also have the first decision on who lives there.
In 2012, David Cameron increased the Right to Buy discounts to £75,000, while introducing a commitment that each home sold would be replaced with another affordable home within three years.
Last year, the government fell behind that pledge when data revealed that 15,981 replacement homes had been acquired or started, compared with the 17,072 required.
Manchester Council said its new policy will see them reinvest Right to Buy receipts in a way which would reduce the impact of the policy more directly.
The proposal, which was agreed by the executive at a meeting this week, uses a similar approach to the one introduced by the council last year, through which councils and housing associations pool funds to buy large properties for bigger families.
