A former council leader says Nottingham is ‘picking up the pieces’ of Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy after the housing waiting list in the city hit 11,000 people.
Nottingham City Council says the supply of council housing is falling significantly short of demand, and councillors fear the bidding process for a home is akin to “going through a tunnel with a blindfold on”.
Cllr David Mellen (Lab), former leader of the council and Dales ward councillor, says the authority has been “picking up the pieces” of former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Right to Buy policy.
Under the policy, the Labour-led authority has now sold more than 24,000 council homes since the early 1980s – almost as many as it has left in its entire stock.
It gave council house tenants the ability to buy their homes at a discount, which currently stands at a maximum of 70 per cent, depending on the length of the occupant’s tenancy.
However, council homes have been purchased under Right to Buy at a much faster rate than local authorities have been able to replace them, meaning there is now a major shortage of social housing across the country.
The issue is so severe, Nottingham’s stock has reduced by almost as many council homes as are left under the ownership of the council in the entire city, which currently sits at 26,000.
As a local response to the crisis, the council is currently reviewing its housing allocations policy, which determines the priorities and a procedure setting out how it prioritises households looking to join the housing register.
The policy further sets out how the council allocates the available social housing properties to households on the register, via its HomeLink system.
It was discussed at a council meeting on July 21, ahead of a public consultation in August.
“My particular concern as a ward councillor is I look at the countless cases on my casework list that have been there the longest, and they are nearly all housing,” Cllr Mellen said.
“They are all people with children. They are all people who have been bidding for some time. I’ve got an example of somebody who has four children in a two-bedroom flat, and they’ve been bidding for five years.
“The bidding process is not transparent for people; they don’t understand it. So I hope through this consultation what you end up with is more transparency.
“The bidding process is like going through a tunnel with a blindfold on. People are bidding week on week on week, and they are not getting anywhere and not getting feedback about why they are not successful.
“This is a political result of Mrs Thatcher’s arrangement to sell houses that should be there for social rent, and we are picking up the pieces of that. What was celebrated in the 1980s as a freedom for the homeowner is actually a real detriment to people who are trying to rent socially now.”
Paul Seddon, the council’s director of planning, added: “Many commentators and experts in the housing and planning fields do recognise this has been a crisis decades in the making. A significant contributor has been that fundamental national policy change.
“But importantly, as a nation, we stopped building council and social housing, and there is pretty strong evidence out there.
“The more we can as a nation do to build more social housing will be a significant contributor to try and address the housing crisis.”
The consultation over the new policy will go live during the week beginning August 25 for a period of six weeks.
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