Tories lure social tenants with 'right to move' pledge
Tuesday, 7 April 2009 1:00 PM
By Alex Stevenson
Affordable and social housing tenants would be handed a 'right to move' by a new Conservative government, shadow housing minister Grant Shapps announced today.
Under Tory plans unveiled in their latest green paper good tenants would be given the right to force their landlord to sell their current property and use the proceeds, minus transaction costs, to buy another property of their choice.
This would help improve mobility in Britain, Mr Shapps argued.
"We need social housing that promotes opportunity and social mobility, rather than reinforcing welfare dependency," he said.
"And we need a compassionate housing policy that recognises the need to house the vulnerable and tackle the soaring waiting lists under Labour."
Under Conservative plans tenants with five years' good tenant behaviour would be handed a ten per cent equity share in their social rented property, which could be cashed in when they wanted to move up the housing ladder. Given the social housing shortage, Mr Shapps pressed, this would be much cheaper than building a new home.
An additional comprehensive national mobility scheme which helps tenants swap with other social tenants is also being mooted.
Grant Shapps explains his proposals to politics.co.uk:
The proposals received a mixed reception at the green paper launch. Some welcomed the commitment to ending "top-down" housing policy. Others expressed concerns about the implementation of the right-to-move proposal, however.
David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said attempts to implement the right-to-move scheme would result in "a huge amount of effort for almost no reward".
Mr Shapps said pilots would test the initiative and that the Tories would not be prepared to force it through.
"Common sense tells you this is a huge change," he admitted. "I'm the first to accept new ideas come with new complications. I have no desire just to railroad this through."
But he added: "We cannot simply ignore. [mobility issues] any longer. We need to do something to get momentum into the housing stock."
Other major Tory proposals outlined today included the creation of local housing trusts, community-led bodies giving villages and towns new planning powers.
Gardens would no longer be classified as brownfield land, ending what the Tories call the 'blight of garden-grabbing'.
And regional planning would be scrapped, giving councils the power to revise their current plans at local authority level.
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