Town planning expert slams Right to Buy scheme

Giving housing association tenants the right to purchase their homes will do nothing to solve the UK housing crisis but instead is aimed at targeting new Tory voters, a Birmingham City University expert has warned. Alister Scott, Professor of Environment and Spatial Planning at Birmingham City University, describe the Government’s plans to extend Right to Buy discounts to 1.3 million housing associations as a “double whammy and bad news for the provision of social housing”. The Government announced new measures in the Queen’s Speech to Parliament last week, giving tenants the Right to Buy their homes while requiring councils to sell off high-value properties and invest the proceeds into building affordable ones. But Professor Scott pointed out that history has shown that the replacements of new homes will not keep up with the losses of housing associations stock and high price stock of council housing, and that the spatial impact of where these properties are lost will be significant and will worsen the housing waiting lists. Professor Scott (right) also highlighted other Government initiatives that seem destined to fail. He commented, “David Cameron’s recent pre-election pledge for 200,000 new discounted houses is what I would call a ‘Ryanair approach to…