Buy council house : Right to Buy

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A council house is a form of public housing found in the United Kingdom. Council houses were built and operated by local councils for the benefit of local population. In 2005, approximately 20 per cent of the country's housing stock was owned by local councils or housing associations. The largest council estate in the country (and one of the largest in the world) was Becontree, East London, with a population of over 100,000. Building started in the 1920s and took nearly 20 years to finish. The Republic of Ireland has a similar public housing system, Local Authority Accommodation.

Many say that the houses tended to have decent space in them, compared to the bottom end of the private sector, but that they also tended to be unimaginatively designed, and rigid council rules often forbade tenants personalising houses.

It was not until 1885, when a Royal Commission was held, that the state took an interest. This led to the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890, which encouraged local authorities to improve the housing in their areas. As a consequence the London County Council opened the Boundary Estate in 1900. From then on council housing grew as governments took more interest in the issue.

Council housing declined sharply in the last Tory era, as the Conservative government encouraged aspiration toward home ownership.

council tenants were given the "right to buy" their council houses on very attractive financial terms. The Right to Buy Scheme allowed tenants to buy their home with a discount of up to 60% of the market price for houses and 70% for flats, depending on the time they had lived there. Councils were prevented from reinvesting the proceeds of these sales in new housing, and the total available stock, particularly of more desirable homes, declined.

The "right-to-buy" was popular with many former Labour voters and, although the Labour government tightened the rules , ,it shows no sign of abandoning right-to-buy. Labour did relax the policy forbidding reinvestment of sales proceeds.

Some councils have transferred their housing stock to not-for-profit housing associations, who are now also the providers of most new public sector housing. Elsewhere, referenda on changing ownership, in Birmingham for example, have failed. The right to buy scheme has been criticized because, in areas where demand for housing exceeds supply, the stock of social housing was depleted faster than it was replaced; because speculating investors were able to buy up council properties through deferred transaction agreements, hastening the rise in property costs; and because the remaining stock of council housing was concentrated in undesirable areas with little employment opportunity, further isolating, stigmatizing the tenants.

The Right to buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom which gives tenants of council housing the right to buy the home they are living in. Currently there is also a right to acquire for the tenants of housing associations.

http://www.fsa.org/ Financial Services Authority

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