Property Hawk the landlord's homepage since 2006
Free Tenancy Agreement FREE tenancy agreement
Free Landlord Software FREE landlord software
Home | Property Manager | Free ASTs | Landlord Forms | Mortgages | Insurance | Inventory | Magazine | Landlords Bible | Directory | Forum | Training | News / Blog |

Thursday, November 21, 2013

End of Right to Buy in Scotland

The Scottish government have put a final nail in Right to Buy scheme in Scotland, with the announcement that those council tenants that were previously eligible to purchase their property have three years to do so, or lose that opportunity forever.

The scheme has been ended to help retain

The Deputy first leader, Nicola Sturgeon justified the end of the scheme by saying,

 “The Scottish Government is doing everything possible to maximise our investment in housing and deliver on our target of 30,000 new, affordable homes over the lifetime of this Parliament. But, given the pressure on both the housing stock and budgets - and with 400,000 people on waiting lists for social housing - we can no longer afford to see badly needed homes lost to the social sector."

“That is why I am today announcing the final stage of the abolition of the Right to Buy – a decision that will safeguard Scotland’s social housing stock for the benefit of citizens today and for our future generations."

The changes have been welcomed by Shelter.

Read more on the changes here

Landlord insurance - portfolio rates

Bookmark and Share

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Right to Buy Policy essentially gives away public assets to a few private individuals at a knock-down price.

It benefits those few individuals, but has left the State with a lack of publicly owned housing stock and a massive housing crisis. It does nothing for future generations, and does not solve the housing problem.

Why should my taxes be used to subsidise and enrich a small number of private individuals? Nobody ever helped me to buy a house, I had to do that on my own.

Let's remember Right-to-Buy was introduced by Thatcher as a vote-buying scheme aimed at bribing Labour voters to switch to the Tories by giving them public assets as a gift.

Any Government not hell-bent on an ideology of flogging off state assets would knock this scheme on the head. Scotland is lucky enough to have such a Government. Shame about the rest of the UK.