[joeysteele]

This was on paper a great policy of Margaret Thatcher's.
Had it been done in her time in a way that prevented former council homes getting into the hands of multi property owners, who then let the homes at ridiculously high and then higher rents.
Also,had it been the case that income from the sell offs, resulted in more homes being built, that sadly didn't happen.
Then it really would have been a superb policy.

I was made aware of problems for people in local authority housing who got into heavy arrears due to the bedroom tax/charge and was stunned to find in a same street, houses still under local authority rents and also houses that had been bought,then sold which were being rented out by a private landlord.

Almost next door to each other,the local authority property had rent that was over £300 less per month than the one privately owned and then rented out.

If that is allowed to go on again,then this is really a bad thing to resurrect as a policy.
The answer is not going down this route at the present time with a low renting housing shortage.
If there is local authority housing in place anywhere, then now, it needs to remain like that, at least until a lot more houses are built.
Otherwise it is going to go the same way as it did before,with many ending up selling eventally,and the property having massively inflated rent charges for someone else coming into the property.

In principle, I could support this when a great deal more housing has been built over the years but not at this time.
I feel this is a bad time to do this and in my opinion,it hasn't been thought out as to the consequences overall well at all.