Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will provide financial assistance to councils to enable them to acquire new social housing to replace properties bought through the Right to Buy policy.

The 2012 Reinvigorated Right to Buy gave councils, for the first time, the ability to use additional receipts from Right to Buy sales to provide new affordable homes. Councils have up to three years to start building and if these receipts are not used within this timeframe they must be returned to the Homes and Communities Agency (or to the Greater London Authority in London), who will issue the funding as grant to provide new affordable housing.

We urge councils to progress their building plans in order to help provide much needed affordable housing for their local communities.