This Has Got to be Embarrassing!

The Big Issue has revealed that “Newham Council, which runs the east London borough with England’s biggest social housing waiting list, sold off 130 properties for £10.6 million, only to buy them back for £33.3m – losing £22m on homes it had owned just a few years previously”. 

This is an example of what they call yo-yo homes. That is, homes sold under the Right-to-Buy scheme, sold at a discount, that are repurchased by councils at the full market value a few years later. 

The Big Issue cites one egregious example in Plaistow. “Newham Council sold a property under Right to Buy in June 2015 for £49,300. Right to Buy rules mean the council was forced to sell it. Just under six years later, in March 2021, they bought that same home back for £320,000, more than six times what they sold it for.”

“This situation has happened 130 times in Newham in the past five years. In total, the council has lost £22.7m buying back properties it owned between five and 10 years previously.”

You’ve got to have some sympathy for Newham, obliged to sell discounted stock by legislation and desperate to maximise the local housing stock for those on the waiting list.

This will be a problem for an administration of any political colour.

A policy introduced over forty years ago to help council tenants become owners; to give them an investment for their families and to build community cohesion has become a taxpayer funded pay-day for lucky purchasers.

Alas, there is little that Newham or any local council can do to buck this state-subsidised market. It might be time to review the policy altogether. If the taxpayer is subsidising the creation of private fortunes, it may be that the policy is no longer achieving the results that were intended.

But just when you thought we were being nice to Fiaz, we thought that we would take a look at what she has said on the matter. This comes from her list of pledges made to secure the Labour nomination for mayor.

Here is what she has done in her time in office to remove Right-to-Buy.

Err...nothing.

But here is what she has achieved.

Ummm...nothing.

So far as we can see, none of the four housing pledges (definition: a binding promise or agreement), has been achieved. 

Little wonder that citizens occasionally feel cynical towards politicians. It’s almost as if pledges are made simply to gain political support and then forgotten.