Andy Burnham wants to suspend the Right to Buy scheme to tackle the housing crisis

“We now have to think about Right to Buy”

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has called for a suspension of the Right to Buy scheme after claiming it was the reason the housing crisis had become “worse every year”..

In a bold and radical move, Burnham, who was re-elected as Mayor of Greater Manchester last week, has declared that the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme, which allows council tenants to buy their council home at a discounted price, should be suspended, for this to be the case, more social housing could be built across the country.

The latest figures from the Local Government Association show that 10,896 homes were sold through Right to Buy in the last financial year and only 3,447 were replaced, resulting in a net loss of 7,449 social homes in 2022/23.

There are 1.4 million fewer households in social housing in England today than in 1980.

Burnham told BBC Breakfast this morning: “We lose social housing every year and across Greater Manchester we lost 500 social homes last year.”

“I say to Whitehall and Westminster: they must allow us to suspend the right to buy on the new houses we are building because if we don’t, trying to solve the housing crisis is like trying to fill a bath, but with.” the plug out because you’re trying to build new houses but you lose them at the other end and that just won’t work.

“We need to rethink Right to Buy now. It’s about suspending it, not ending it, but we can’t be in a situation where the housing crisis is getting worse every year because we’re losing the homes that people can really afford.”

Burnham has pledged to build 10,000 social homes, with at least 1,000 in each borough.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward