Rooker to investigate 'right-to-buy abuses'
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Your support makes all the difference.Lord Rooker, the Housing Minister, admitted yesterday that the Government was investigating alleged abuses of the "right-to-buy" rules for council tenants.
Lord Rooker strongly denied that Labour had a "secret agenda" to scrap the Thatcherite policy that allows tenants to purchase their house or flat at a discount of up to 70 per cent. But he made clear that he believed that the policy had not been designed to turn tenants into "absentee landlords", as many had become by sub-letting their homes.
The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which is responsible for housing, has commissioned research into claims that tenants are being offered £15,000 by property companies to exploit loopholes in the right-to-buy scheme.
Other suspected abuses include tenants applying to buy their homes once a demolition order has been discussed for their estate in order to reap the hefty compensation paid to owner-occupiers.
Although Lord Rooker denied that there were any plans to abolish the 22-year-old policy, it is understood that he and John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, are being urged to use the investigation as a basis for a thorough review of the system.
The most controversial proposal would be to suspend sales in property hot spots such as London, York, Leeds and Manchester, where affordable housing was becoming impossible to find.
Among other, more likely, measures being suggested are a cut in discounts to tenants as well as extending the current pay-back period of three years to seven or 10 years. The research, by Herriot Watt University, will produce a report in November or December.
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