60% increase in sell-off of social housing

The Department for Communities and Local Governments says there has been a huge 60 per cent leap in the number of social housing units sold off and so effectively joining the private stock.

In 2013-14 there were 26,376 sales of social housing dwellings; of these, 11,740 were by local authorities and 14,636 were by what are officially called private registered providers, mostly housing associations.

Some 59 per cent of all social housing sales in 2013-14 were through Right to Buy and the average discount was no less than 47 per cent - much higher than in recent years.

In 2013-14 local authorities sold dwellings under Right to Buy with a total discount of £679 million, more than double the £307 million in 2012-13.

Right To Buy and the sell-off of council and more recently housing association stock has a checkered history in the UK.

The number of sales were very high in the 1980s, averaging approximately 97,000 annually. Sales decreased in the 1990s, averaging approximately 49,000, before increasing slightly after the Millennium. The credit crunch reduced sales drastically, as did the widespread belief that the ‘best properties’ had long been sold.

For several years there were fewer than 10,000 sales annually but increases over the past two years have taken the sales figures back to 2006 levels.