You have to be pretty out of touch with reality to go into an election, during a severe housing shortage, with a measure that will reduce the availability of affordable homes across the country. That is what the Tories did in promising to introduce the right to buy for housing association tenants.
Recent reports highlight the alarm in all sectors about this move. The Tories’ obsessive search for a Thatcher-style legacy has the potential to damage our communities and increase inequality still further. But, more importantly, it means even fewer houses that local people can afford.
In rural areas we face significant problems with housing, as I outlined in my article last year. In West Oxfordshire the dominant provider is Cottsway, the housing association created to take the former council houses from West Oxfordshire district council. If Cottsway is forced to sell off homes in the wrong places and at highly discounted prices it will leave our villages in particular vulnerable to even more of the sort of depopulating pressures that has left many empty during the week, and without shops, pubs or (open) halls and churches.
Councillors of all parties are concerned. The Country Land and Business Association has voiced its opposition. Labour in urban and particularly rural areas must give a voice to these worries and campaign for a better solution.
It is important that Labour does not get caught out making a case against home-ownership. Labour governments and councils have always championed home-ownership, and provided ways for tenants to become home-owners securely, with regard to the need to maintain good numbers of houses for social and affordable (and market-rate) rent in an area. The problem with right to buy was never allowing tenants to purchase their home. It was the impact on communities where such homes are scarce, and depended on the ability of authorities to replace homes that were sold. In the 1980s right to buy was used by the Tories as a political weapon with no regard for the health of families and the welfare of communities. We cannot let that happen again.
In West Oxfordshire, Labour is behind moves to invest council reserves in new affordable homes schemes. But we cannot risk local taxpayer money if it turns out that the business model is flawed, and if the government will force these homes to be sold without replacement. There are also sensitive communities in our areas of outstanding natural beauty, like the Cotswolds in West Oxfordshire, where house-building sites are hard to find and right to buy needs to be managed with caution.
Housing associations have a decent record of allowing tenants to buy their homes and yet they are guilty of not building anywhere near enough in recent years. Labour nationally and locally needs to work with them, as natural allies, to plan for and then build a new generation of council houses, then manage secure pathways to home-ownership, particularly in our market towns and villages, that will enrich and enliven our communities, not turn them into sterile holiday lets.
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Duncan Enright is a councillor on Witney town council and West Oxfordshire district council. He was the prospective parliamentary candidate for Witney. He tweets @DuncanEnright
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