More tenants could be excluded from Right to Buy, Rayner proposes

The housing department has proposed increasing the minimum amount of time tenants have to live in their social home before buying them from the current three years.

It was reduced to three years from five years in 2014, but the government is seeking views on whether to raise it to five years, 10 years, or more than 10 years.

It is also considering banning tenants from buying any newly built social housing.

Currently, tenants can buy housing that is more than three years old, but it has proposed increasing the length of time newly built social housing is protected from being bought to between 10 and 30 years or “permanently”.

It also wants to reduce the maximum discounts for tenants using Right to Buy to between £16,000 and £38,000 depending on the council – bringing them back to pre-2012 levels.

Under the current rules, tenants have to repay this discount to the council if they then sell the property on within five years of buying. The government wants to extend this to 10 years.

The measures come after the government announced other changes to Right to Buy in the Budget, including allowing councils to spend all of the money they get from a Right to Buy sale on buying or building new social housing rather than just half.

Shelter chief executive Polly Neate said Right to Buy reforms was “vital… but not enough on its own”, adding that the changes “must be combined with serious investment in social homes in the Spring Spending Review”.

Rayner has made social housing her mission in government, having previously told the BBC she wants to see “the biggest wave of council housing in a generation and that is what I want to be measured on”.

Some have urged the government to be more radical on Help to Buy with Manchester mayor Andy Burnham calling for it to be “suspended” while others have called for it to be scrapped entirely.