Housing and planning minister provides detail on application of extended right to buy

At evidence sessions held on 1 December, Lewis confirmed that the government has no intention of placing restrictions on the future use of homes purchased by housing association tenants under the proposed new right.

Lewis said "a restriction on reselling or letting their home would limit [buyers'] ability to move for work or family reasons". The minister added that it would be unfair to impose restrictions on housing association tenants that do not apply to council tenants under the existing right to buy scheme.

In its current form, the Bill will enable the communities secretary to demand funds from local councils relating to the amount of vacant high value council housing in their possession and to use those funds to help fund the replacement of homes sold under the new scheme. The committee rejected proposed amendments that would have given the mayor of London and the London Assembly responsibility for collecting such funds raised within Greater London and would have prevented the communities secretary from collecting those funds without their consent.

Lewis said secondary legislation would set out circumstances under which certain high value council housing would not have to be sold. He said "no decisions have been made yet about types of housing that could be excluded or cases when housing would not be considered as vacant" and that information currently being gathered about existing stocks and values will help the government decide which homes will be excluded and the threshold above which homes will be considered "high value".

The minister said the detailed design of the extended right to buy scheme would include checks and balances to avoid the abuse of the right by those not intended to use it. Lewis said the detailed design was "underway" and will be informed by pilot schemes announced in the government's spending review last month.

The committee also narrowly voted against amending the Bill to require funds raised through the sale of housing association homes under the right to buy to be used to provide like-for-like replacement homes of the same tenure, in the same local authority area as those sold in accordance with local housing needs. Lewis said the government wanted councils "to have discretion about how they use their portion of the receipt to fund new housing in order to meet the needs of their local community".

Planning expert Elizabeth Wiseman of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said: "The introduction of the extended right to buy shows the government's continued obsession with home ownership. The key to the success of the extended right will be to ensure that the ability to replace the homes that are sold is robust to ensure that supply is not lessened further. If a robust mechanism can be put in place this should lessen the criticism that has been put forward by some commentators that the government's priority should simply be to build new houses, regardless of their tenure. However, if resupply can be achieved then their certainly appears to be demand for the extended right. Trials of the proposed extended right have begun so watch this space."