Councils Reconsider Housing Association Links

The Right to Buy extension will ‘re-cast’ the relationship between local authorities and housing associations, councils have said. In return for the discount, there will be more flexibility to build homes for other tenures such as shared ownership and “portable discounts” for certain properties.  John Bibby, chief executive of the Association for Retained Council Housing, said if associations replace homes sold under the policy with low-cost home ownership homes, it could change the relationship with local authorities. “We will have to wait and see what that means for traditional type of agreements where councils gift land or provide discounted land to associations in return for nomination rights,” he said. He warned if associations become more commercial, councils could treat associations “like any other developer”.  Read more on Inside Housing.