Right to buy ban sought

The National Housing Federation (NHF) has called for a temporary ban on tenants buying social housing to help stop the slump in affordable housing stock. The NHF said that twice as many affordable homes had been sold off than had been built in England between 1999 and 2007, and added that affordable stock had fallen by an ‘unsustainable’ 300,000. Since 1999 the number of social houses fell from 4.3 million to 3.9 million, while the number of households on waiting lists had risen by 61 per cent to 1.61 million. A spokesperson for NHF said that one in 13 of every household in the country is on a waiting list for an affordable rented house, and this is likely to increase to one in ten. The government said it disagreed with the proposal as right to buy had helped thousands of households own their own homes.