'Right-to-buy' sales triple

 
Joseph Watts17 May 2013

The number of houses bought under the “right-to-buy” scheme has tripled in the capital over the past year.

A total of 1,055 social tenants bought their home from a London council in 2012/13 compared with 311 the previous year. Greenwich had the most right-to-buy sales with 129 in the past year compared with 18 in 2011/2012.

The initiative was revamped in April last year with tenants offered discounts of up to £75,000 off the value of the home, or £100,000 in London. Over the year the number of such sales rose from 24 to 94 in Southwark; from 71 to 96 in Barking and Dagenham; and from eight to 79 in Haringey.

Tenants need to have lived in their council property for at least five years to be eligible, but there are plans to cut this to three years.

Shadow housing minister Jack Dromey said the Government was failing to live up to its promise to build a new council property to replace every one sold.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in