Portable discounts could slow Right to Buy
A lack of detail surrounding plans for portable discounts could slow the introduction of the government’s flagship extension of the Right to Buy to housing association tenants.
Members of a ‘sounding board’, which is working with the National Housing Federation (NHF) to develop the policy, have flagged the issue as a major source of concern.
Under the ‘voluntary’ Right to Buy extension, housing associations will be allowed to exclude certain properties from the scheme at their discretion.
Tenants living in these properties will qualify for ‘portable discounts’ which will allow them to buy another housing association property elsewhere- an aspect of the scheme which has not been piloted.
One member of the sounding board, who asked not to be named, said: “There is a lot of work going on to try and figure out how that would work practically and at the moment we are finding more difficulties than solutions.”
Concerns surround the ease of finding an alternative home in areas where there is limited development or association stock and what happens if a property cannot be found.
There are also calls for clarity over mechanisms for securing agreements with other housing associations for tenants to buy from their stock where necessary.
The sounding board has three meetings remaining, the first next Tuesday, after which the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will produce a draft scheme for association boards to consider, before the extension is introduced in the autumn.
Sounding board members said this timescale would be “challenging” and suggested the portability element may take longer to develop.
One added that the sounding board had hoped tenants would be allowed to buy any home on the open market.
However, the government has not agreed to this as it wants the compensation for discounts to be paid to housing associations to ensure it is invested in new supply.
Paul Hackett, chief executive of Amicus Horizon, said his organisation plans to limit exemptions to as few properties as possible to avoid issues with portable discounts.
Sue Chalkley, chief executive of Hastoe which works mainly in rural communities, said many of its homes will be excluded, but is “concerned” about where suitable homes would be found for a portable discount.
The NHF, which set up the sounding board, did not comment.
A spokesperson for the DCLG said: “We are continuing to work with [housing associations] on the detailed implementation of this.”
JARGON BUSTER
Portable discount: Where a home is excluded from the voluntary Right to Buy by a housing association, tenants can use the discount they would have qualified for to buy another property. This must be another housing association home, but could be one owned by another association.
Voluntary Right to Buy: Right to Buy discounts will be extended to housing associations ‘voluntarily’ after the majority of the sector backed an NHF-brokered deal with government in September. In exchange for the deal, the government offered greater flexibility, full compensation and no legislation to introduce it.
In numbers
1.3m Number of housing association tenants the government has pledged to offer the Right to Buy to
10 years Residency in social housing the current eligibility period to qualify being tested in the pilot scheme
£103,900 Maximum discount under the scheme, available to tenants in London. £77,900 is the maximum outside the capital
443 Housing association tenants which had applied to buy their home under the pilot scheme as of April. There were 48,000 housing association properties in the scheme
