Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
BURNHAM: TIME TO HALT RIGHT TO BUY
Plea on new homes to tackle housing crisis
Solving the crisis will be like trying to fill a bath with plug out ANDY BURNHAM ON RIGHT TO BUY DEMAND
THE Right to Buy scheme should be suspended for new homes in a bid to tackle the housing crisis, Andy Burnham has urged.
The newly re-elected Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester has vowed to build 10,000 council homes by 2028 – the end of his third term in office.
But he insisted yesterday that trying to solve the housing crisis while Right to Buy remains in place was “like trying to fill a bath with the plug out”.
First introduced by Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in the 1980s, it allows tenants to buy their council home at a discount.
Charities have long raised issues the policy creates in the face of soaring waiting lists for social homes and the failure of successive governments to build enough properties.
Earlier this year, Shelter said 21,600 social homes were either sold or demolished in 2021-22 in England while just 7,500 new properties were built – leading to a loss of 14,100 houses.
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Mr Burnham said: “We lose social homes every year, and across Greater Manchester for the last year 500 social homes were lost.
“I’m saying to Whitehall and Westminster – you need to allow us to suspend Right to Buy from the new homes that we are building. Because if we don’t, trying to solve the housing crisis is like trying to fill a bath but with the plug out because you try and build new homes but you lose them at the other end.”
The Labour veteran added: “We do now need to rethink Right to Buy. It’s about suspending it, not ending it.
“But we can’t be in a situation where the housing crisis gets worse and worse every year as we lose those homes that people can truly afford”.
The Scottish Government ended Right to Buy in 2016 after nearly half a million social homes were sold off over a 30-year period north of the border.
At the weekend, Mr Burnham was re-elected for a third term as the Mayor of Greater Manchester with 420,749 votes more than his Conservative rival.
In his victory speech, Mr Burnham said he is hoping he will be able to do even more for the region if Keir Starmer becomes the next Prime Minister in the general election this year.
He added: “Greater Manchester’s moment is now and I’m absolutely not going to waste it.”
Mr Burnham said he will also take the poll result as an “instruction to complete the building of a public transport system that befits a city region of our stature”.