Angela Rayner defends restricting tenants' access to Right to Buy

Angela Rayner today defended her bid to tighten rules for the Right to Buy policy she once benefited from.

The Deputy PM used the scheme to buy her council home with a 25 per cent discount in 2007, before making a five-figure profit when she later sold it.

But Ms Rayner, who heads the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, is now proposing a series of restrictions on tenants' access to the policy.

She said these were needed to 'build a fairer and more sustainable scheme that delivers value to the taxpayer'.

The Cabinet minister claimed a 'series of wrong-headed Right to Buy reforms going back to 2012' were to blame for making a social home a 'distant dream for many'.

Under her proposed reforms to Right to Buy, Ms Rayner wants to increase the three-year minimum tenancy period before tenants are able to apply under the scheme.

She also plans to ban tenants from buying newly-built social homes for a number of years, so as to encourage local councils to invest in new properties.

Ms Rayner has already moved to reduce the maximum discounts available for tenants buying their council homes.

And she is scrapping an extension of the Right to Buy policy to housing association tenants, as had been announced by the previous Tory government.

Former Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher first allowed council house tenants to buy their homes at a discounted rate in the 1980s.

But the conditions of the Right to Buy policy have regularly changed since its introduction.

Ms Rayner previously rejected claims of 'hypocrisy' after it emerged she made a £48,500 profit on her ex-council home in Stockport, Greater Manchester.

She dismissed accusations her planned reforms would 'pull up the ladder' to make it harder for other social housing tenants to benefit in the same way she did.

In an article for the i newspaper today, the Deputy PM said she had 'never made a secret' of being one of the two million social tenants who benefited from Right to Buy.

'I’ve never made a secret of it, and I want people who have lived in their council home to still have the opportunity to own it, as I did,' she wrote.

'But today, the life-changing first step into social housing on affordable rent is a distant dream for far too many.

'Thanks to a series of wrong-headed Right to Buy reforms going back to 2012, millions of low-income families have been forced into insecure, poor quality and unaffordable accommodation.

'Over 150,000 children are in temporary accommodation. Nearly 1.3 million people on social housing waiting lists.

'Put simply, we are losing more social homes than we can build, at huge cost to families, to taxpayers, and to communities.

'This must change – and as someone who owes so much to the helping hand I got from council housing, I am determined to do it.'

She added: 'We must build a fairer and more sustainable scheme that delivers value to the taxpayer.

'All in the service of delivering the biggest boost to social homes in a generation.

'Council tenants who have made a place, a home, and contributed over many years will still be able to own that home.

'But our reforms will protect social housing stock so more people can take the first step.'

Ms Rayner, who has launched an eight-week consultation on her planned reforms. promised to 'get Right to Buy back on the right track'.

Under the scheme's current rules, there is a maximum discount of 70 per cent of the market value of a council tenant's property, or up to £136,400 in London boroughs and £102,400 across the rest of England. 

But, at this month's Budget, Labour announced the return of Right to Buy discounts to their pre-2012 levels as they scrapped Tory changes to the policy.

It means, from tomorrow, the maximum discount in most parts of London is reduced to £16,000, £38,000 in the South East, £34,000 in the East of England, £30,000 in the South West, £26,000 in the West Midlands and North West, £24,000 in the East Midlands and Yorkshire, and £22,000 in the North East.

As part of the Budget measures, the Government also announced that local councils can retain all of the receipts from council home sales, including the share that previously went to the Treasury and totalled around £183 million every year.