Shapps sharpens the Right to Buy

rated31

So, a few years back I went to local council for social housing and was told i didnt qualify as i was working etc so my fanily and i had to find private rent as cant get a mortgage in cornwall. What gets me with this is, if I was a bum in society I would of been given social housing and now would have the right to buy!For me it doesnt matter who gets in power if you are in the middle sector u get kicked the nuts.

Michael C Feltham FFA, FFTA

Nice idea.

Only problem is "Council Houses" don't very much exist any more.

A large number of councils converted their housing stock by transferring it to the larger Housing Associations; mainly since the local authorities feared the forward and ongoing repair and re-modernising capital costs.

Since Housing Associations themselves are in the main funded by government via the Housing Corporation (older associations core stock was financed by HAG: Housing Aid Grant, where up to 80% of the capital cost was a government grant. No payback, they have become the de facto provider of Social Housing.

And recipients of bundles of government largesse via Housing benefit.

Thatcher made two major mistakes: receipts from compelled sale of council house stock had to be "Ring Fenced" in special accounts and could only be used to pay down local authority borrowing.

Second, far too many Housing Associations were registered charities: and charity landlords were expressly projected against tenants demanding right to buy.

These HAs still are charities. Thus this will have to change.

And about time, for the largest pay their executives obscene salaries; and are actually disguised shadow property companies, buying and developing land, selling it off and running care homes and etc.

Tricky problem to unwind: since there are a number of truly charitable trusts running residential accommodation for those seeking same: thus the real charities, as against the pretend charities (Which means most HAs) would need protection from RTB.

What is perhaps most interesting of all, is one reality: when Two Chins Prescott savaged RTB discount, he waited until all hi NuLab mates living in Westminster Borough council owned property had first exercised their RTB. (Many MPs had managed to rent local properties as their qualified "Second Home": thus they were not only extracting large expenses from the public purse, they also took incredible discounts under RTB of up to 70% off market appraised value.)

David Lindsay

Hot on the heels of David Cameron’s ignorant suggestion that social housing tenants be stripped of their security of tenure, comes a proposal to entrench even further the root of the problem: the sale of council housing.

That policy compelled the State to make gifts of significant capital assets to people who were thus enabled to enter the property market ahead of private tenants who had saved for their deposits. And, as part of Thatcher’s invention of mass benefit dependency, it created the Housing Benefit racket, which is vastly more expensive than the maintenance of a stock of council housing.

I am a good Chestertonian in this as in most, though not quite all, matters. I would dearly love every household to have a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty State. But within the practicalities of these things, there is also a very strong case that each locality should have a base of real property from which to resist both over-mighty commercial interests and an over-mighty centre.

Already, under New Labour, the powers that be apparently could not distinguish between the respectable working class and the characters from Shameless. So council and housing association tenants were to lose security of tenure in order that Shameless characters could be moved in next door to them, or even in place of them. Those in that actual or potential position should contact Ed Miliband without delay.

Miliband should make local government his battleground, emphasising the need to restore in full the proper powers of local government, with no tendering out of services in Conservative areas to the people who fund the local Conservative Party (in Labour areas, the Labour-funding unions rightly make sure that things are kept in house), no ultra vires principle, no surcharging, no capping, much proclamation of the fact that local government is significantly less profligate than central government, and none of the things that would not be tolerated in any other comparable country, not least including the frequent redrawing of boundaries, abolition of whole tiers, and such like.

We need to bring back the old committee system, which gave individual councillors real clout, and so made it worthwhile to buttonhole them in the street, in the pub, or wherever, or indeed to write to, telephone or email them; Eric Pickles has made a good start in allowing a return to that system, but he needs to require it. We need a system whereby each of us votes for one candidate and the requisite number, never fewer than two, is elected at the end.

And we need a fair, efficient, comprehensible and accountable system of funding. That needs to be an annual flat fee, fixed by the council in question, strictly voluntary, entitling the payer to vote and stand in elections to the council, and payable through the benefits system on behalf of the very poor. Central government would continue to meet much or all of the cost of statutory services to statutory standards. With its fees, the council could do pretty much whatever it liked on top, directly accountable to the people paying the bills.

Everyone uses lots of local services. Unless they send their children to commercial schools, as hardly anyone does, then most people make as much such use as each other, regardless of class or income; indeed, such things as street lighting are often significantly better in more affluent areas. But hardly anyone votes in local elections, because local government is emasculated yet expensive, and notoriously unaccountable. It has not always been any of those things.

Ed Miliband, over to you.

daniel maris

Every government has its annoying little twerps and Grant Shapps has got to among the most typical of that breed. Glib, over-ebullient, pleased with himself but of little brain...I could go on.

The truth is we have a housing crisis of huge proportions in this country thanks to mass immigration and it is just about to get a whole lot worse as we hurtle towards 70 million people with increasing number of single person homes as well, due to divorce and extended old age.

To talk about building 100,000 homes over - what? - 4 years, betrays the ambition of a mouse.

I S

Met him. Greasy, arse-licking (Cameron was also in attendance), unprincipled, shameless opportunist.

Capn Flint

RTB became an industrial-strength taxpayer-funded scam, whereby people quite deliberately made themselves 'homeless' or pretended to, to target the tenancies of properties that might then be useful Buy-to-rents. They would then rent it out, and wander off to a neighbouring LA (Islington/Camden/Barnet/Haringey) and again pretend to be homeless, very often under a different name.
RTB is a way of robbing the first-time buyer of both rented housing and an opportunity to bid for free stock, and that in a country where housing stock is decreasing in proportion to the population.
It wasn't right when Mrs Thatcher did it. It's not right now.

Baron

rated31 & daniel maris have it.

The housing problem have got worse because of uncontrolled immigration, greater demand for single occupier units, it cannot but get worse, also as rated31 points out, the idea of flogging council properties to sitting tenants will only entrench the entitlement culture further, just the opposite of what’s needed, who should be on the priority list are people like him, not those who live on transfer payments. Madness.

lloydj

Well, it must be right if all the above are so against it. Well done

M G

how can you use the right to buy if you are a housing assosiation tenant lets face it there are not many council houses left