I caught on to the true meaning of selling housing association properties to the sitting tenants.

This Week with Andrew Neil was debating the issue and it seems that the actual proposal is: Housing association houses are sold on full discount to the sitting tenants.

The council/government then sells 15,000 vacant council houses each year, instead of renting to new tenants (75,000 across a fixed parliament) to provide the discounts by giving that money to the housing associations selling the houses.

That means the council gets nothing from the house sales and therefore cannot replace the 15,000 to 75,000 council houses sold.

The social housing reduces by 75,000 houses in a fixed parliament at a time of housing crisis.

The housing associations got their houses from the councils by transfer, not purchase, so that is a double loss to the councils, plus many areas voted in local referenda to retain council housing and could, if the Tories win the election, be forced to sell their housing stock, ignoring the local results.

It also runs the risk that housing associations could claim the one for one replacement properties to their own sales have never belonged to the councils, cancel their charitable status (in effect demutualise) like the building societies and as private companies charge private rents.

Housing benefit will go through the roof funded by council tax as council houses have the cheapest rents and will cease to exist.

Although Scotland and Wales will not be subject to this as their governments have protecting legislation, those parliaments can be scrapped at any time as we have no written constitution.

In the same way the localisation legislation would be ignored by these proposals as it forces councils to do things many will be against.

RP Lambeth
Martin Road, Hove