Get right to buy right

SIR – The right to buy, which the Prime Minister is considering reinstating (report, May 2), is a good idea – provided the new scheme doesn’t make the mistakes of the past.

In the 1980s, authorities were allowed to spend the revenue as they saw fit, resulting, to some extent, in the housing shortage today. This time, if the revenue is ring-fenced to build more social housing, the scheme could become self-perpetuating.

Stephen Clough

Wilmslow, Cheshire

SIR – The right-to-buy scheme is wholly wrong. First, it reduces the number of houses available for rent by those who cannot afford to rent on the open market, and impoverishes the organisations that previously owned the properties, making it difficult for them to build replacements.

Secondly, in effect, it gives large sums of money to some families who are not necessarily more deserving than others. A more honest system would be just to give the householders the equivalent sum of money in cash to leave their rented homes and buy somewhere else.

David Vaudrey

Doynton, Gloucestershire