Treasury 'Stopping Councils from Building Extra 100,000 Homes A Year'

The Treasury is preventing councils from building up to 100,000 extra homes a year by continuing to snuffle 75% of the cash from Right to Buy (RTB) sales, according to the Local Government Association (LGA). Speaking about the Government's new home swap scheme for social housing tenants, Gary Porter, housing expert at the LGA said the scheme was great in principle, but wasn't the solution to the housing shortage. He said: "We certainly need to build more homes than we’re doing at the moment and the key to that is in the Treasury. "The Treasury is preventing councils from being able to deliver as many homes as they should be able to. We need some better changes to the Housing Revenue Account system to allow that to be implemented. We could build over 100,000 extra homes a year if we were allowed to keep all the capital receipts from the council houses we sell under RTB. At the moment the Treasury is proposing they take three quarters of those receipts away from us." Read more on 24dash.