Right to buy won’t help trapped private renters

sir – The Government is proposing a repeat of Margaret Thatcher’s right-tobuy scheme (report, May 2). However, getting a council or housing association rental property is hard enough as it is, due to their scarcity. A huge number of people who should be eligible cannot get anywhere near one.

To make any sort of comparison to the original right-to-buy scheme is flawed, as the number of council properties available at that time far outstripped what is available now.

Moreover, how would this proposal help the huge number of middleincome earners who cannot afford to buy and are trapped in the private rental market, due to an over-inflated housing market?

Thomas Le Cocq

Batcombe, Somerset

sir – If the redoubtable Margaret Thatcher had dealt with the other half of the equation and made it a condition that councils used the money realised from the sale of their properties to build replacements, we would not be where we are today.

The bigger problem is not the cost of buying or renting; it is that the low level of housing stock, coupled with immigration, means a situation dominated by demand, not supply, with high prices being the obvious outcome.

Giving the right to buy existing rented stock is not much better than moving the deck chairs, except for the political benefits.

Tony Jones

London SW7

sir – Regarding the right to buy social housing that is owned by housing associations and charitable trusts, I wonder who will build social housing in future if there is a risk it could be compulsorily sold a few years later at a loss.

Penny Keens

Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire