Andy Burnham calls for Right to Buy suspension amid 'desperate housing crisis'

07 May 2024 , 12:29

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Andy Burnham was re-elected as Greater Manchester Mayor with a staggering mandate (Image: Matt McNulty/Getty Images)

Andy Burnham has called for Right to Buy to be suspended for new homes as the country faces a "desperate housing crisis".

The newly re-elected 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 today 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 the ex-Tory PM Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s the policy allows council tenants to buy their council home at a discount. Charities have long raised issues amid sky-high waiting lists for social homes and the failure of successive governments to build enough social homes.

Earlier this year Shelter said 21,600 social homes were either sold or demolished in 2021-22 in England while just 7,500 new homes were built - leading to a loss of 14,100 homes. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Mr Burnham said today: "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."

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He added: "We do now need to re-think 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 back 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 a staggering 420,749 votes more than his Tory rival. In his victory speech the Labour Mayor said is hoping he will be able to do even more for the region if Keir Starmer is elected as PM at the general election.

"Greater Manchester's moment is now and I'm absolutely not going to waste it," he said. Mr Burnham said he will also take the result as an "instruction to complete the building of a public transport system that befits a city region of our stature". "And I will do it within this new mayoral term, uniting bike, bus, tram and train in a single integrated system," he said.

Ashley Cowburn