Member

Amendments 18 and 25 address a more fundamental concern. Clause 7 will mean that those living in rural areas will not have access to the right to buy. While we appreciate the challenges of building new social housing in rural areas, again, we believe that the Government’s focus should be on overcoming those challenges. Further, there may be very good reasons why an authority would want to sell housing through right to buy to make better use of the proceeds elsewhere, where demand may be greater. On principle too, why should social housing tenants have fewer rights to home ownership simply because of where they currently happen to be housed? That is not fair to the individual.