Social Homes for Rent

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that we have seen a spiralling increase in housing benefit costs—staggering increases over the past decade or so. Of course, taking poor-quality private rented accommodation and turning it into high-quality affordable housing is a good thing and provides value for money for the taxpayer.

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

The Government’s recent announcement that right to buy is being extended to housing association properties will even further deplete the stock of homes for social rent. Is it now time to allow councils to keep 100% of their receipts from right to buy in order to rebuild and to give them the ability to set the discounts locally that their particular circumstances dictate?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I have some sympathy with the point that the noble Baroness makes, but we should point out that there are now greater flexibilities around right-to-buy receipts—not necessarily 100%, but they are greater. We have also removed the cap on borrowing for the housing revenue account, and that is why we are seeing councils building far more homes than they previously did.