Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many homes have been sold to date through the Preserved Right to Buy; what steps his Department takes to ensure such homes can be replaced; and how many homes sold under Preserved Right to Buy have been replaced to date.

This Government wants to ensure that as many social tenants as possible are helped to achieve their home ownership aspirations. The Preserved Right to Buy ensures that social tenants who were living in their homes at the time of a stock transfer maintain their important right to home ownership. Figures for Preserved Right to Buy sales are collected by the Department on an annual basis. In the first year of the reinvigorated scheme (2012-13), there were 2,458 Preserved Right to Buy sales. Sales data for previous years (table 648) can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-social-housing-sales

As housing associations are independent organisations, and stock transfer agreements are private commercial contracts, we do not mandate what they do with receipts they receive from Preserved Right to Buy sales. It is the Department's expectation that these receipts should be used to help fund new homes for affordable rent, and we would encourage housing associations to work in partnership with local authorities, and use other sources of cross-subsidy, to help achieve this.

For future stock transfers, my Department has recently published a Stock Transfer Manual which sets out our intention to require that, for transfers completing after 30 September 2014, net proceeds from Preserved Right to Buy sales are, within three years, used to fund new affordable housing at no greater subsidy cost than under the main affordable homes programme.