Asked by: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what the cost to the public purse was of (a) producing and (b) distributing the Right to Buy information booklet to households.
Answered by Lord Barwell
The Right to Buy campaign aims to ensure that eligible social housing tenants are aware of the increased discounts available through the Right to Buy scheme as well as changes to the scheme and that those who are interested in taking up this opportunity to be a home owner, know where to obtain the necessary information to help them decide if it is right for them.
The direct marketing activity sets out to raise awareness of and eligibility of Right to Buy as Right to Buy can only be exercised by eligible tenants if they know about it, can check their eligibility and have sufficient information about their Right to Buy.
For the last wave of marketing in October 2016, we sent leaflets to a combination of 789,695 households informing them of their legal Right to Buy their home. The Department spent the following:
1. Production/ Printing/ Postage: £75,116.60
2. Distribution/ Data purchase: £60,951.67
The direct marketing activity has driven a strong response over the last 4 years of the campaign with a conversion rate of around 8% which is significantly higher than industry norms and has also led to improved efficiencies in local authorities through generating higher quality applications– further evidence of value for money.
The cost of the production and distribution of the Direct Marketing equates to 18 pence per leaflet. Over 63,000 tenants have now been able to buy their homes since April 2012, generating £3.5 billion in additional sales receipts. There were 12,000 sales in 2015-16, nearly 5 times higher than pre-reinvigoration sales in 2011-12.
Under the reinvigorated Right to Buy, local authorities are now able to keep the receipts from additional Right to Buy sales to pay off debt and fund additional affordable housing.