PM to push ahead with property plans
Extension is controversial because it forces not-for-profit social landlords to sell assets at a discount
David Cameron will push ahead with plans to extend a subsidised house-buying scheme to 1.3m housing association tenants, with the expanded ‘Right to Buy’ programme a central measure in today’s Queen’s Speech.
A housing bill will give these tenants an option already on offer to council tenants, who can buy their homes at big discounts — now as much as £104,000 (Dh588,271) — thanks to Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policy in the 1980s.
The extension of “right to buy” is controversial because it involves forcing independent notfor-profit social landlords to sell their assets at a discount.
Housing associations will be expected to replace each sold home on a “one for one” basis and will have to finance this through the forced sale of valuable vacant properties by councils elsewhere.
Cameron will use the Queen’s Speech — an annual event setting out the government’s legislative programme — to indicate his priorities for the next five years, untethered from his former Liberal Democrat coalition partners after they were crushed in the general election on May 7.
The prime minister says he wants a “one nation” government with an emphasis on measures to support blue-collar workers.
There will be new legislation to create apprenticeships, to ban under-21s from claiming housing and unemployment benefit and to cut the maximum amount of welfare benefits any household can claim in a year from £26,000 to £23,000.