Two councils will hand over around 10,000 properties to Housing Trusts next week.
Reigate and Banstead Housing Trust will pay Reigate and Banstead council £64m for around 5,000 properties and in turn carry out a £27.9m repair and improvement programme during the next five years.
In a ballot of tenants last August, 80% of tenants voted to support the transfer.
Erewash council will also transfer ownership of more than 5,900 properties to Erewash Housing.
Erewash Housing has agreed to pay the council £38.1m for the stock and will carry out a £53m repair and improvement programme during the next five years.
So far there have been 153 large-scale voluntary transfers to housing trusts involving more than 600,000 homes.
The transfers raised over £9.8bn in payments and investment contracts.
A further 15 councils have been put on to the government’s programme to transfer over 60,000 properties to the private sector.
The councils are: Amber Valley, Bromsgrove, Cherwell, Forest of Dean, Liverpool, Maidstone, Manchester, North Hertfordshire, Oldham Metropolitan, Rushcliffe, Scarborough, South Norfolkcouncil and Stockport Metropolitan.
A further nine local authorities have applied to transfer another 120,000 properties. Planning junior minister Sally Keeble said that she was confident the government would allow the transfers.
EGi News 25/03/02
