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Social Housing Sell-Off: Let Councils Buy Back the Home
Housing associations sold 5,250 homes in 2024-25 as 1.3m households sat on waiting lists. Councils want first refusal to buy them back before they're lost.
'Give councils chance to buy back old stock’
Housing associations have been under increasing scrutiny as the housing crisis gets ever more severe. Now a freedom of information request from the Local Councils Network has revealed that, despite over 1.3million households sitting on the waiting list for homes, housing associations are selling off properties in record numbers.
Representatives of private housing associations have emphasised that a lack of housing stock is the primary threat to affordable housing, however the 5,250 homes sold at close to full price in 2024-25 suggests councils are not getting the opportunity to provide homes to those in need.
The LCN has petitioned the government to use the Social Housing Bill currently making its way through Parliament to ensure public funding only reaches social landlords who "manage disposals responsibly".
Vulnerable
It is proposing a "right of first refusal" system that offers "more time and better information" to give councils a realistic opportunity of acquiring at-risk housing.
It also suggests a grant recovery rule so that, if a social rent home is sold, the money is reinvested in the area and, as a last resort, councils would have access to a rescue fund.
Councils could apply for support to buy back at-risk homes and maintain their affordable housing stocks.
The evidence provided by the LCN suggests that the actions of national housing associations have far-reaching effects on the UK's housing environment but hit the most vulnerable most severely.
According to LCN reporting, for example, housing associations are increasingly denying families in homelessness access to affordable-rent homes because, paradoxically, they have deemed the rent unaffordable.
This comes at the same time as "stock rationalisation" by housing associations, which means properties traded back and forth between organisations has developed into a multi-hundred-million-dollar market of its own. The bonuses of housing association CEOs have ballooned alongside.
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