PROPOSALS to extend the right-to-buy scheme to include housing association properties would increase hardship for residents on low incomes, a Green councillor has claimed.

Councillor Bill Randall, Brighton and Hove City Council’s housing committee chairman, said his party was “absolutely opposed” to the planned reforms.

The councillor was speaking in response to an announcement made by Iain Duncan Smith, the secretary of state for work and pensions, proposing an expansion of the right-to-buy scheme.

Conservative councillors in the city have backed the move, saying it would right a long-standing anomaly which discriminated against housing association tenants.

Introduced in the 1980s, right-to-buy rules allow most council tenants to buy their homes at a discount but the rules do not apply to housing associations.

The changes could impact on 6,000 homes in the city.

Following a vote at a council meeting at the end of last month, Brighton and Hove City Council wrote to the Department of Local Government and Communities requesting to be exempt from the right-to-buy system.

The authority has recently received a response from housing minister Brandon Lewis which rejected the authority’s request and announced it would be launching a new sales campaign in a selected number of local authorities, including Brighton and Hove.

Coun Randall said the response indicated that Mr Lewis either lacked understanding of the city’s housing problems or was indifferent to the plight of 20,000 households on the council waiting list.

Coun Randall, who said the housing association plans had been defeated previously in the 1980s, added: “It would further reduce the pool of affordable social rented homes and increase the housing hardship endured by many people on modest and low incomes.

“New laws would be needed to include housing association tenants.”

Councillor Garry Peltzer Dunn, Conservative housing spokesman, said: “It is a bit of an anomaly that council house tenants generally have the right to buy their home but housing association tenants do not.

“This proposal would take away that disparity. We would certainly be supportive of this proposal as long as the proceeds of the sales were used to build replacement homes.”