London should be able to set its own rules on whether council tenants are allowed to buy their own homes, Sadiq Khan has said.
He appeared to suggest that borough councils should have the ability to depart from national rules and decide for themselves whether to “pause, stop or continue” with the right to buy scheme.
The London mayor’s comments come amid reports that Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, is due to announce that council tenants will have to live in their homes for five to 10 years before being eligible to buy them – far longer than the three-year rule that exist at present.
Mr Khan told The Standard: “I think the Government should devolve to London the ability to decide whether to pause it, to stop it or for it to continue. We are the best people who know the position in London.
“My anxiety about the right to buy is that over the last 40-odd years, for every six homes sold off, only one has been built.”
Since Mr Khan became mayor, a total of 13,575 council homes in London have been sold under the right to buy scheme.
At the same time, Mr Khan has made the building of new homes a key part of hitting his own affordable housing targets.
He has promised to build 40,000 new council homes by 2030.
By April 2024, a total of 24,031 council homes had been started in London and 8,862 completed – meaning there are about 5,000 fewer council homes in the capital than when Mr Khan came to power in 2016.
Earlier this week, Mr Khan said London was caught in the “toughest environment for housebuilding” since the 2008 global banking crash.
He told the London Conference that the average London house price was “14 times the typical household income”, while someone buying a modest three-bedroom house in Tooting - where he grew up in a council house - “would not see much change from £1m”.
A total of 2,055 homes were sold in London in 2022/23 under the right to buy scheme, the highest figures since 2017/18.
Mr Khan told The Standard: “Of course, I understand, as somebody who went through this, the aspiration that all of us have to be homeowners, and right to buy enabled people who were council tenants to be home owners.
“The challenge is replenishing the stock. If the Government wants to devolve to us the powers, we who know London best can decide what to do.
“A lot of those people who buy their homes under right to buy are previous tenants who have fulfilled their wish, dream, aspiration to be home owners. It’s not necessarily the case that those houses have left Londoners who need subsidised housing.
“The issue is that over the course of many years these have been sold off to people who sub-let them.
“You often have on council estates tenants next to each other, one of whom is a council tenant paying a social rent, living next to somebody who is a tenant with a private landlord who has previously bought that under right to buy.
“The issue I make to the Government is: right to buy is very contentious because this stock, over a period of time, leaves the social housing stock.
“So if you give to us the power to decide whether it’s right to pause, whether it’s right to suspend and whether it’s right to carry on, we are the best people to do that.”
Tenants can apply to buy their council home if they have been tenants for at least three years.
But the rules are due to change on November 21 – reducing the discounts available.
People living in council houses for three to five years get a 35 per cent discount, increasing by one per centage point each year up to the maximum discount amount.
Tenants of flats start with a 50 per cent discount, which increase after five years by two percentage points per year, up to the maximum discount amount.
At present, the maximum discount is whichever is lower between 70 per cent of the value of the property or the maximum discount for the region - currently £136,400 in London.
After November 21, the maximum discount falls to £16,000 in London – except in the boroughs of Barking and Dagenham and Havering, where it will be £38,000.
Tenants who sell their home within five years of buying it have to pay back some or all of the discount.
According to City Hall, the 10,270 council home starts that were funded by the GLA in 2022-23 is the highest number started by London boroughs since the 1970s.
But in 2023-24, a total of 939 council homes were started in London with City Hall funding.
More than half of these were concentrated in only four boroughs - Camden, Hackney, Greenwich and Kingston.
Fifteen councils did not start any GLA-funded council homes last year.
Asked if he could hit his 40,000 target, Mr Khan said: “There is a lot in the pipeline and we think that, with the right support from the Government, we can definitely do that.”
In September, the cross-party London Assembly criticised Mr Khan’s own record on housebuilding, with only 2,358 affordable homes started with City Hall funds in 2023-24 – the lowest level since he became mayor eight years ago.
