Right to Buy Scheme (2) – Parliamentary Written Answer

Tim Farron: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what steps his Departments is taking to ensure that local authorities ensure a one-for-one replacement of homes sold under right to buy.

Kris Hopkins: This Government has committed to re-invest, for the first time ever, the additional receipts from right to buy sales in new affordable rented housing. Our aim, across the country as a whole, is to deliver a new home for each additional home sold under the reinvigorated right to buy. The one-for-one replacement policy applies to additional local authority sales, that is sales above the level forecast before the reinvigoration of the policy in April 2012. Since the reinvigoration, local authorities have sold 13,800 homes, approximately 8,300 of which are additional, and over 2,000 dwellings have been started on site or acquired. There will be a time lag between the right to buy sale and the construction of the new build home, but the replacement timetable is in control of the local authority. If a council were to fail to spend the receipts within three years, it would be required to return the unspent money to Government with interest. This provides a strong financial incentive for any slow-coach councils to use this new funding and get on with building more homes for local people.