UK Parliament / Open data

Housing and Planning Bill

The money is not going to stretch that far. We have already established that it is supposed to pay for expensive discounts, brownfield sites, and a replacement for local authority stock. The Minister says that local authority tenants have the right to buy: we did not expect housing associations to pay for their discounts, but we now expect local authorities to pay for the discounts on not only their own property being sold but housing association property being sold as well. I can see no fairness in that at all.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has produced a pathway forward. Indeed, if the Minister wished, one could add to it to make it more attractive. A right-to-acquire discount, which runs from about £6,000 to £9,000, could be an incentive before adding in equity loans. This can be modelled in different ways to make it attractive and reasonable, but not to clobber poorer local authority tenants to fund the giveaway discounts for people who are better off.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
769 cc1274-5 
Session
2015-16
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
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