Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office, Edinburgh - Briefing Document Seven- Page 3!

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Parliamentary Officer:Rev Graham Blount
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Briefing Document No 7 - Page 3 of 4

Housing Scotland - Continued.

· Most Scots (83%, it is said) wish to own their own homes

· It would help to break down the monopoly tenure of some housing schemes

· It fits with the Executive's intention of allowing people to continue to live in their existing neighbourhood as their circumstances change.

Particular difficulties for rural areas are recognised and the Housing Bill is seen as the opportunity to address this.

(E) Right to buy - arguments against

This was not proposed in the Green Paper on Housing; although comments can be made on the proposals, they are not part of any consultation, and SCVO has claimed they run contrary to the compact with the voluntary sector.

The main outcry against this measure has come, not surprisingly, from the housing association movement, led by the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. In the debate in Parliament in January, they claim that of 33 back-bench MSPs speaking, 26 expressed reservations about the right to buy. (They were surprised to find themselves being written off by the Minister as "professional housing lobbyists"; she claimed that she was listening instead to "the punters").

Some of the SFHA's arguments are:

· since there must be some variations in the terms of tenancy within the social rented sector (ie exemptions for sheltered housing, different rules for charitable housing associations), it is not possible to have a completely undifferentiated single social tenancy, and it is therefore not necessary to extend the right to buy to housing association tenants

· extending the right to buy cuts across stated Executive objectives of promoting social inclusion.

· the proposals get in the way of a strategic approach, because they depend on the decisions of individuals; on the Executive's own figures, the right to buy has, since 1980, led to a reduction in socially rented housing stock ranging from 10% in Glasgow to 41% in East Dunbartonshire

· the right to buy to date has had an uneven impact. Within local authorities, the best properties have tended to be sold, leaving greater concentrations of rented stock in the remaining areas: this would continue

· although the rural dimension of low supply of rented housing is recognised in the Executive's paper, this is not an exclusively rural issue

· the Executive's estimate of a 2% take-up of the right to buy each year is unrealistically low

· there are already indications that the right to buy might undermine housing associations' ability to raise finance for development.

Shelter also strongly challenge the proposals: They "are poorly-researched, badly-designed and contradict the overall policy aims … The tragic thing is that the Executive could achieve its laudable aim of evening out tenants' rights by applying a modernised and properly revamped tight to buy in both council and housing association sectors." But the Chartered Institute for Housing, while urging reform of the right to buy system, does not resist the idea that it should be extended to housing association tenants.

Politically, it has been argued that the right to buy must not be at the expense of right to rent; it is a betrayal of those in the voluntary sector who have worked to create social rented housing.

Other Housing Issues

The Executive has also published a paper on "Housing and Anti-Social Behaviour" - dealing with a serious problem, but in a way that has led Shelter to express doubts re proposed powers to evict re anti-social tenants (Further details from SCPO).