Tory right-to-buy policy falls apart in just a few hours

The Tories have unveiled their manifesto today – their pledge to extend right-to-buy has been at the centre of this. But it’s already falling apart. 

The party have said that they can make £4.5 billion every year by making councils sell off “the most expensive housing when it falls vacant.”

However, the Labour party have done some digging and found that last year under this policy only £100m was raised from the sell off of only 479 homes. That amounts to 2% of the funds they say they’d raise each year in the next parliament. As well as being ineffective, Labour have also said that this policy would cost £4bn in housing benefit.

The Tories have gone on to say they’d use the money from selling off social rent homes to create affordable rent homes. Yet the National Audit Office (NAO) have estimated that said this would add at least £3.7bn to the housing benefit bill.

This policy is accompanied by what the Labour party are calling a “half baked plan”, where they Tories have pledged to build 400,000 homes through a £1bn fund. Labour have pointed that taking all these figures into consideration, the Tories plans don’t add up as this would only mean £2,500 would be spent per home (according to the NAO the average cost of building a home is £141,000).

Update: The Tories are clearly very pleased with this endorsement from “Million Homes” – but there’s a catch. Million Homes was co-founded by Natalie Elphicke – the wife of Tory MP Charlie Elphicke. Their website also says that she launched the Conservative Party’s national policy discussion forum as its first national director.

So that’s an endorsement from a Tory, who is married to a Tory MP.