Council homes cut sparks rush to buy

SHE bought her former council house in Stockport under Margaret Thatcher's right-to-buy scheme, but Angela Rayner wants to make it harder for current tenants to do the same in a bid to increase Britain's stock of socially rent-ed housing.

-  ROB PARSONS

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced in last year's autumn Budget that the Government would reduce the discount tenants could claim to buy council homes.

But there's been an unexpected side-effect of the policy in Leeds.

As local democracy reporter Don Mort writes, Leeds City Council has seen a huge surge in tenants applying to buy their homes before the November 20 deadline, after which discounts would be cut to pre-2012 levels.

Jess Lennox, the council's executive member for housing, told a meeting the 2,500 applications which came after the Budget was around 4% of all council homes, worth millions of pounds in rental income.