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The government has finally officially abandoned David Cameron’s flagship plan to force councils to sell off their most valuable homes.
As it prepares to publish the long-awaited Social Housing Green Paper this morning, the government has confirmed it will not go ahead with the ‘higher-value asset levy’ first announced in 2015.
The policy would have required councils to make an annual payment to government, to be recouped through the sale of higher-value homes as they become vacant.
The intention was to use the funds to meet the £4bn cost of extending Right to Buy discounts to housing association tenants.
It is not clear how the government intends to fund this policy, or indeed if it intends to go ahead with it, now that the policy has been dropped.
In a statement ahead of the publication of the green paper, the government said: “The paper outlines plans to build on the new borrowing capacity granted to local authorities by exploring new flexibilities on how they spend the money from homes sold under the Right to Buy scheme, and not requiring them to sell off vacant, higher-value stock.”
Inside Housing revealed last October that the government was close to scrapping the higher-value asset levy.
The policy was deeply unpopular with councils, which warned it would rob them of their best homes and prevent them building new ones.
The government had previously announced the policy would not come into force in 2018/19 – but had not formally scrapped it.