Housing Association Tenants (Hansard, 15 January 1996)

§ Mr. Curry

Following the publication of the housing White Paper, "Our Future Homes", over 3,000 copies of the consultation paper on purchase grants for housing association tenants were sent out to interested parties, and 341 responses have been received.

I have carefully considered the views of many housing associations that future HAG-funded properties should not be subject to the new right to buy. But the Government continue to believe that tenants ought to have this new right, and provision for this will appear in the forthcoming Housing Bill.

I have, however, decided to make a number of changes to the schemes as originally proposed in the light of the responses received. These changes are: the exemption from the schemes of properties in all rural communities of less than 3,000 population, because of the particular difficulties in providing replacement properties; replacement properties need not be new-build, but could be either rehabilitated existing stock or bought on the open market if this represents the best value for money; associations will be allowed to offer tenants alternative properties from their stock, for which purchase grant will be available; Housing Association grant repayment may be waived on all receipts from sales to tenants on condition that they go into the ring-fenced fund to provide replacement properties; Large-scale voluntary transfer associations will be treated in the same way as other associations—that is they will not have to bear the burden of grant themselves, as originally proposed; in the statutory scheme, associations—and other independent social landlords—will not be required to sell properties where the outstanding private sector debt is greater than the market value; in the voluntary scheme, participating associations will not be required to sell where: the property was built entirely by private donation or funds; properties are subject to restrictive legal covenants or agreements; the costs of acquisition and improvement (but not repair), or the outstanding private loan debt on the property, are greater than the market value.

I have deposited a list of responses to the consultation paper in the Libraries of both Houses, and copies of individual responses are available through them.