Scottish government plans will mean that new tenants will no longer have the right to buy their council or housing association homes north of the Border.
The scope of the right-to-buy policy, introduced by the Thatcher Government, will be greatly reduced if the plan, part of a government Housing Bill published yesterday, is accepted by MSPs. The right to buy will also be abolished for all new homes built in the social housing sector in Scotland.
The changes will not affect existing tenants, who will still have the right to buy the homes in which they live.
More than half a million local authority houses in Scotland have been sold at a discount over the past 30 years.
The Executive says that the aim of the new legislation is to increase the supply of affordable housing and improve the quality of housing in all sectors. One by-product of the right to buy has been a severe decrease in good quality council housing stock.
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Alex Neil, the Housing Minister, said that the Scottish government was investing £1.5 billion in affordable housing, including a new generation of council housing: “These far-reaching reforms will safeguard that investment for future generations. They put the interests of tenants and homeless people at the heart of housing regulation and encourage landlords to improve the services that they provide.”
Over the next decade, the move is expected to mean that 18,000 social sector homes that would otherwise have been sold off will be retained.
David McLetchie, the Scottish Conservative Chief Whip, described the move an act of “naked political vandalism” and said that more than a million Scots had got their feet on the housing ladder thanks to the Tories right-to-buy policy. “Nearly half a million homes have been bought thanks to a policy which has done more to make housing affordable for working people in Scotland than any other before or since,” Mr McLetchie added.
Receipts from sales, he said, were approaching £7 billion, and this cash, in turn, had enabled other rented homes to be modernised and new council houses to be built for those who continued to rent.
“Over the last 30 years, neighbourhoods across Scotland have been transformed and tenants became proud owners who went on to improve and extend their homes without having to rely on their council landlords.”
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The minority government may struggle to get the legislation through Parliament since Labour as well as Conservative MSPs are expected to oppose it.