Property: Shared Ownership

Baroness Maddock Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Shared-ownership leases prohibit subletting by the leaseholder, as mentioned earlier, to protect public funds and to ensure that applicants are not entering shared ownership for commercial gain. Landlords can make an exception in exceptional circumstances and they have to consider such requests on a case-by-case basis.

[Baroness Maddock (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister tell us what proportion of homes in Great Britain today are under shared ownership? I wonder if the Government are doing any research to find out how successful this sector is. I know, for example, that when you want to move it is no simple matter. The legal attitudes to this are really quite difficult. Can the Minister inform us what research the Government are doing into this?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

Yes, indeed. I will have to write to the noble Baroness with the actual statistics but we are looking at this as one of several serious options for ensuring that young people get a hand on the housing ladder. The noble Baroness may know that a shared owner can come in and purchase a share of between 25% and 75%. We are following up on the current statistics but this is a future policy that we are working on.