Housing and homelessness charity Shelter has revealed the potentially devastating impact of government plans to sell off council housing, with new research showing that over 22,500 council homes in the East of England could face being sold on the private market.
The proposed scheme would force council homes worth more than a set threshold for the region to be sold once they become vacant. The money would then be used to fund new discounts of up to £100,000 for housing association tenants taking up the Right to Buy.
According to the charity’s estimates, Cambridge would be the worst hit area in the region. Here more than 3,200 homes could face forced sale - equivalent to almost 46% of the area’s total council housing stock.
St Albans could be forced to sell almost 60% of their total, or nearly 3,000 homes, once they become vacant and Epping Forest approximately 3,000 homes, or 47% of their total council housing stock.
Campbell Robb, Shelter’s chief executive, said:
“At a time when millions of families are struggling to find somewhere affordable to live, plans to sell off large swathes of the few genuinely affordable homes we have left is only going to make things worse.
“More and more families with barely a hope of ever affording a home of their own and who no longer have the option of social housing, will be forced into unstable and expensive private renting.
“The government needs to scrap this proposal and start helping the millions of ordinary families struggling with sky high housing costs. If George Osborne is serious about turning around the housing crisis, the autumn spending review is his last chance to invest in the genuinely affordable homes this country desperately needs.”
Figures showing how each area in the East of England could be affected by the forced sale of council homes:
|
Area
|
Number of homes above the threshold
|
Proportion of total homes
|
|
TOTAL (East of England)
|
22553
|
14.1%
|
|
Cambridge
|
3238
|
45.9%
|
|
Epping Forest
|
3063
|
46.6%
|
|
St Albans
|
2992
|
59.6%
|
|
Dacorum
|
2671
|
25.8%
|
|
Welwyn Hatfield
|
2334
|
25.6%
|
|
South Cambridgeshire
|
1362
|
25.7%
|
|
Brentwood
|
1181
|
41.5%
|
|
Uttlesford
|
1140
|
40.1%
|
|
Basildon
|
703
|
6.2%
|
|
Thurrock
|
620
|
6.0%
|
|
Harlow
|
616
|
6.3%
|
|
Stevenage
|
469
|
5.8%
|
|
Central Bedfordshire
|
452
|
8.8%
|
|
Colchester
|
384
|
6.3%
|
|
Southend-on-Sea
|
381
|
6.3%
|
|
Babergh
|
254
|
7.3%
|
|
Mid Suffolk
|
195
|
5.8%
|
|
Castle Point
|
139
|
9.2%
|
|
Norwich
|
132
|
0.9%
|
|
Luton
|
91
|
1.1%
|
|
Broxbourne
|
65
|
18.4%
|
|
Tendring
|
43
|
1.3%
|
|
Ipswich
|
13
|
0.2%
|
|
Great Yarmouth
|
8
|
0.1%
|
|
Waveney
|
5
|
0.1%
|
NOTE: All other areas in the region are estimated to not be affected, either because their council housing stock has previously been transferred to a housing association, or because there are no homes above the regional threshold.
Contact: Shelter press office - 0207 505 2162
- For more information and methodology please refer to Shelter’s full report - The Forced Council Home Sell-off
- The discounts referred to for housing association tenants are the same amount currently offered to tenants housed by local authorities. Depending on the length of the tenant’s occupation; the type of property; and the property’s value, the maximum discounts are £103,900 in London and £77,900 in the rest of England.
- To estimate the number of council homes that would be subject to forced sales, Shelter looked at the profile of the council housing stock in each local authority and the turnover of council housing stock.
- To understand the profile of council housing stock and estimate how many homes would be eligible to be sold, several sources were used:
- The total council housing stock in each local authority from DCLG;
- The distribution of council housing stock by number of bedrooms by local authority from the 2011 Census;
- The median house price of market homes by local authority from the Land Registry;
- Property transactions data across England for 2015 from the Land Registry; and,
- A comparison of the values of market housing and council housing stock from the English Housing Survey in 2009.
- To understand how many might be sold off each year the turnover rate of council housing was calculated based on lettings data from 2013-14.
- The cost estimates of the forced sales are based on the projections of stock above the regional thresholds released by the government. Associated policies that the forced sales are expected to fund include:
- repaying the historic debt on forced sale homes;
- replacing the sold council home;
- a £1 billion fund to decontaminate brownfield land for development; and
- funding the extension of Right to Buy for housing association tenants.
