Right-to-buy purchases have doubled in a year

 

The number of council homes bought in London under Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy legislation has soared for the first time in a decade.

About 700 council homes were bought in the last 12 months, more than double the previous year, figures reveal.

Sales are set to rise further after Chancellor George Osborne announced in last month’s Budget that tenants would be able to buy their homes after three years, rather than five, and with £100,000 discounts for Londoners.

Council figures show that 534 homes were sold in the nine months to last Christmas, meaning that 2012/13 is likely to have seen 712 sales, compared to 292 in the 2011/12 financial year. Right-to-buy sales in England have fallen from a peak of 170,000 in 1983 to around 3,000 a year since 2008. Wandsworth has seen one of the biggest increases, with 54 tenants buying their home in 2012/13, compared to two the previous year. Southwark sold 116 homes compared to 24 the previous year, while Greenwich has sold 74, Haringey 36 and Newham 28.

The figures were revealed as homeless charity Crisis warned that the number of London families being made homeless has risen by 30 per cent after Government cuts to housing benefit, resulting in a homeless rate that is three times the national average. Some 15,220 households were accepted as homeless by London councils last year, compared to 11,680 in 2011.

Leslie Morphy, chief executive of Crisis, said: “Many of London’s homelessness and housing problems are rooted in a severe and growing lack of genuinely affordable social homes.”

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