Boris Johnson Seeks to Move on From Partygate With New Right to Buy Offer

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tries his hand at bricklaying in Oldbury, UK, on April 19, 2021. Jonathan Buckmaster - WPA Pool/Getty Images

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set out plans to allow housing association tenants to buy their properties at substantial discounts and will also open the door for people on low incomes to use housing benefit money to obtain mortgages.

Speaking in the Lancashire seaside resort of Blackpool, the prime minister unveiled the biggest boost to the right-to-buy policy since the 1980s when it was a flagship policy of Margaret Thatcher.

But Polly Neate, CEO of the housing charity Shelter, described it as a “dangerous gimmick” and said: “The government needs to stop wasting time on the failed policies of the past and start building more of the secure social homes this country actually needs.”

Johnson, who survived a vote of confidence in his leadership on Monday night over the Partygate affair, also used the speech to address the cost-of-living crisis, which has been exacerbated by rising petrol prices.

He said: “We have the tools we need to get on top of rising prices. The global headwinds are strong, but our engines are stronger. And, while it’s not going to be quick or easy, you can be confident that things will get better, that we will emerge from this a strong country with a healthy economy.”

The right-to-buy policy has been criticised for years for eroding the stock of social housing and pushing up the amount paid out by the government in housing benefits.

Research by Inside Housing in 2017 found four out of 10 properties that were bought under right-to-buy are now rented out privately and many of those landlords get their rent paid for out of housing benefits.

Simon Hill, writing for the New Economics Foundation, said: “Right to buy has reduced the supply of social homes, meaning more people rely on housing benefit because they cannot be housed in a council house. This means a larger housing benefit bill which ends up in the bank accounts of private landlords, not councils and housing associations who would recycle it into public investment.”

But Housing Secretary Michael Gove said that unlike the Thatcher-era right-to-buy policy the new scheme would ensure the receipts from sales was reinvested in social housing in a “like-for-like, one-for-one replacement” model.

It is not the first time the Conservatives have tried to extend right-to-buy to housing associations.

After winning the 2015 general election then Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to allow 1.3 million housing association tenants to buy their properties.

But legislation was shelved following opposition from housing associations. In 2018 Theresa May pushed through a pilot project in the West Midlands, which led to the sale of 1,892 housing association properties but, as she struggled to implement Brexit with no parliamentary majority, she never went ahead with a nationwide scheme.

One of the most radical but complex parts of the policy unveiled by Johnson in Lancashire is the proposal that some of the £30 billion in housing benefit which goes on rent to private landlords could instead go towards securing and paying for mortgages.

Shadow housing secretary Lisa Nandy said there remained “big outstanding questions for the government” on how housing benefit money could be used to buy homes.

Nandy told the BBC: “We’ve got a severe shortage of affordable housing in this country, we’ve got a million people on the housing waiting lists.”

PA Media contributed to this report.