Greater Manchester (Parliament News )- Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, urges discontinuation of Right to Buy for new homes amidst a housing crisis. He pledges to build 10,000 council homes, emphasizing the need for policy reform.
Andy Burnham has called for the Right to Buy to be discontinued for new homes as the country meets a “desperate housing crisis”.
What Housing Goals Has Andy Burnham Pledged to Achieve?
The newly re-elected Mayor of Greater Manchester has pledged to build 10,000 council homes by 2028 – the end of his third term in office. He insisted that trying to solve the housing problem while Right to Buy remains in business was “like trying to fill a bath with the plug out”.
First presented by the ex-Tory PM Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s the policy permits council tenants to buy their council home at a discount. Charities have long presented issues amid sky-high waiting lists for social homes and the negligence of successive governments to build enough social homes.
Earlier this year Shelter expressed that 21,600 social homes were either pledged or demolished in 2021-22 in England while just 7,500 new homes were built – leading to a thrashing of 14,100 homes.
What Reforms Does Andy Burnham Advocate for Housing Policy?
Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Mr Burnham expressed: “We lose social homes every year and across Greater Manchester for the last year 500 social homes were lost.
“I’m saying to Whitehall and Westminster – you need to permit us to suspend Right to Buy from the new homes that we are producing 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 try and build new homes but you lose them at the other end.”
What Impact Would Suspend Right to Buy Have?
He contended: “We do now need to re-think Right to Buy. It’s about suspending it, not finishing it. But we can’t be in a position where the housing crisis gets worse and worse every year as we lose those houses that people can truly afford”. The Scottish Government concluded the Right to Buyback in 2016 after nearly half a million social homes were sold off over 30 years north of the border.
At the weekend Mr Burnham was re-elected for a third term as the Mayor of Greater Manchester with a staggering 420,749 votes more than his Tory opponent. In his victory speech, the Labour Mayor stated he is hoping he will be able to do even more for the area if Keir Starmer is elected as PM at the general election.
“Greater Manchester’s moment is now and I’m absolutely not going to waste it,” he stated. Mr Burnham expressed he will also take the result as an “instruction to complete the building of a public transport system that befits a city region of our stature”. “And I will do it within this new mayoral term, uniting bike, bus, tram and train in a single integrated system,” he said