Right to Buy review
Professor Steve Wilcox, Professor of Housing Policy, University of York
Bruce Forbes, Director, Angus Housing Association
The Right to buy is not inherently a good or bad thing but the discounts available to some tenants that buy their properties in Scotland should be increased. That was the sensational conclusion of Steve Wilcox.
Right to buy is the most significant housing policy in the last 25 years accounting for more than a quarter of a million sales and raising over £45 billion outstripping all other government privatisation programmes by far.
Steve Wilcox argues that the key question for the debate is the cost of the re-let from the housing stock. With tenants who choose to exercise the right to buy generally, stay in the same property for at least 15 years. Thus, the loss to providers is only the re-let in 15 years time.
Steve Wilcox argues that to represent real value of money to the public purse for every three properties sold under the right to buy another two should be built.
Bruce Forbes declared that he felt that the right to buy had been an unmitigated disaster and called for the scrapping of the right to buy. However he did concede that decisions regarding the right to buy should be given back to local councils and local housing associations. To highlight these points he used a diversion of anecdotal evidence to highlight the many losers that have resulted from the right to buy.