The government has dismissed speculation that council tenants’ ‘right to buy’ their homes will be scrapped, but is considering ways of tackling abuses of the system.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman (PMOS) said that abuses would be “curbed” – especially companies’ practice of buying council homes in areas earmarked for regeneration, with the aim of making a profit when the council buys the properties back in a compulsory purchase order.
However, the spokesman added that any suggestions that deputy prime minister John Prescott had drafted plans to suspend the right to buy was news to him.
But the government is understood to be exploring ways to prevent third parties benefiting from the sale of council stock.
The PMOS said that it was “surely not right” for someone who was not a council tenant to buy a house for £40,000 on a site scheduled for demolition and then receive a much larger sum a few months later when the council discovered that it had to buy it back.
He added that the government had not decided whether to ban council tenants from buying properties on estates earmarked for demolition.
Details of the proposals will be set out when the deputy prime minister reveals his housing reform plans to Parliament this autumn.
But the government has categorically denied that the reforms would amount to scrapping right to buy.
The PMOS said that there were “no plans to end it. Full stop. Period. End of story.”
EGi News 30/07/02
