80,000 council homes could be lost by 2020

The LGA estimates this drop in affordable council rented housing would shift spending from bricks to benefits by driving up the housing benefit bill by £210 million by the end of the decade as more families move into the more expensive private rented sector. Town hall leaders forecast that 66,000 council homes will be sold to tenants under the existing Right to Buy (RTB) scheme by the end of the decade with current complex rules and restrictions making it difficult for councils to rapidly replace the majority of these homes sold. Councils only keep a third of sale receipts to build new homes and have long argued for the ability to retain 100 per cent of receipts locally. The LGA predicts councils could then be forced to sell a further 22,000 "high value" homes in order to fund plans to extend the scheme to housing association tenants, although this number could be higher depending on how government chooses to define "high value". The LGA is warning that some new housing measures, such as the loss of £2.2 billion from council housing budgets by 2020 as a result of social housing rent cuts, risk making building any replacements all but impossible.