Right to Buy 'Could Dent Public Finances and Reduce Social Housing'

Extending the right-to-buy scheme to housing association tenants could undermine the UK’s public finances, according to an assessment of the Conservative party’s flagship policy by the Institute of Fiscal Studies. The independent thinktank warned that selling off housing association homes would “represent a significant giveaway … potentially billions of pounds over the next parliament” and would “worsen the UK’s underlying public finance position”. It said given the “less-than-impressive record” of delivering replacement social housing under the existing right to buy, “there is a risk that these policies will lead to a further depletion of the social housing stock – something the proposal explicitly seeks to avoid”.  Download a copy of the report from the IFS website.