Right to Buy Shake Up

Nothing for weeks from me, and then two posts in one day!

However, the announcement that the SNP government is to consult on bringing forward changes to the right to buy legislation for council houses is an excellent development.

I believe that the right to buy policy has had long term consequences of creating real pressures on the availability of socially rented homes across the country.

I understand that many families have personally benefited by the policy as individual units. Indeed, I know, and am related to many people in that category. But taken as a whole, I think it has left us with a vastly depleted number of council houses available for rent today, which given the huge numbers of people registering as homeless in Scotland each year (over 50,000) as well as the huge waiting lists that exist for the limited number of available properties gives us huge problems today.

In short, as wider public policy and leaving the individual benefits to individual families (as important as they are) to one side for a moment, the right to buy policy has been limited in its effectiveness.

Therefore, the possibility that any new homes built for social let may be excluded from right to buy legislation is a very sensible one.

One of the reasons that local authorities have been reluctant to build new council houses was the realisation that as soon as they were built and let they were likely to be bought by tenants at huge discounted value under the right to buy legislation presently in place. You can understand the reluctance of local government to spend money on new properties that might be quickly whipped from under their feet.

Therefore, with this possibility removed, it is much more desirable for local authorities to get back into the house building game.

In itself, this proposal will not revolutionise socially rented housing in Scotland. It might just be the first step to doing so however.

At a time when Gordon Brown's Labour Party and David "just call me Dave" Cameron's Tories get sucked into a Dutch Auction on inheritance tax (something that effects only 6% of heritable estates it is worth noting), it is useful to remember that there are those who will not ever have to "worry" about falling into the taxable bracket in relation to this tax. They are the countless numbers of people who neither can afford or want to buy a house and are desperately waiting on a housing list for a council house.

They will welcome the idea being floated by the SNP government.