About the Local Councils Network
The Local Councils Network (LCN), formerly the District Councils’ Network, is the national voice for 171 district and unitary councils in England. Our member councils are responsible in law for housing need, homelessness and housing strategy in their areas, and it is their communities that lose out when social homes pass permanently into the private sector.
LCN is available to speak to any MPs wishing to support or table amendments. We can also provide disposal figures for any local authority area on request. Please contact LCN@local.gov.uk.
Summary
LCN welcomes the Social Housing Bill and its stated objective of protecting existing social housing stock.
Every year thousands of social homes are lost through disposals, where a housing association sells a home on the open market to a private buyer rather than to another social landlord. These are commercial sales, not sales to tenants under Right to Buy or Right to Acquire, and the homes are permanently removed from the social sector and from communities that need them most.
Clause 11 of the Bill would, for the first time, require a housing association to notify the council four weeks before selling a home on the open market. At Lords Third Reading on 1 September, the Minister confirmed Government is planning a Commons amendment on the disposals notification period. We welcome both.
But knowing a home is about to be lost is not the same as being able to save it. Councils often cannot compete with a private buyer on price. The vast majority of these homes are sold at open market value, far above what they are worth as social housing, with no requirement to offer them to a council or another social landlord first.
We are asking MPs to support a package of Bill amendments and wider measures that together would give councils and other registered providers a genuine opportunity to keep these homes in the social sector. Three require amendments to the Bill; the others rest with Government and Homes England.
The problem: Rising need, shrinking stock
There are 1.34 million households on social housing waiting lists in England. Temporary accommodation reached a record 135,580 households at the end of March 2026. Our member councils tell us Social Rent is the tenure that suits the majority of these households, and the one most often lost when a housing association disposes of a home.
Why Social Rent matters
Social Rent and Affordable Rent are not the same thing, and the difference matters enormously to councils and the families they house. Social Rent sits at around 50 to 60% of market rate. Affordable Rent is charged at up to 80%. The gap between them averages around £44 a week, or £2,300 a year. Our member councils tell us they are seeing a growing number of families in temporary accommodation turned down for Affordable Rent homes because they cannot pass the housing association’s affordability checks. For those households, a Social Rent home is not a preference, it is the only realistic option.
Evidence on the scale of disposals
Our Freedom of Information analysis of Regulator of Social Housing data shows the scale of the problem. Since 2018/19, housing associations have sold 25,003 social and affordable homes to private buyers on the open market. In 2024/25 alone they sold 5,250, the highest annual figure on record, up 89% since 2022/23. 87% went at open market value.
Much of the stock at risk was originally built with public money and transferred from councils to housing associations in the 1980s and 1990s, on the understanding it would remain social housing for the long term. The stronger oversight that came with those transfers has since been removed, and there is no requirement today to consider local housing need before a home is disposed of.
Nor is there any requirement for what replaces a disposed home to match what was lost. In 2024/25, housing associations’ net gain in Social Rent homes was just 2,864, 7.2% of their total net gain across all tenures, with the remaining 92.8% in Affordable Rent and low-cost home ownership.
What this looks like locally
Case study: Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council found that every property sold on the open market by one large housing association, which owns stock in 90 English local authority areas, was a Social Rent home. Several had originally been transferred from the council decades earlier on the understanding they would remain social housing.
Case study: South Hams District Council and West Devon Borough Council have together seen 138 homes sold by a single housing association since 2022/23, 49 and 89 respectively. The same provider has replaced and grown its stock in the area, but mostly near the boundary with Plymouth, not where the homes were lost. Dartmouth and Salcombe have seen significant losses, and the villages of Bondleigh, Highampton, Broadwoodkelly and Stowford have lost all their social housing.
Housing associations and councils: a crucial distinction
Some disposals are legitimate. Councils dispose of social housing too, sometimes as part of regeneration schemes. The difference is what happens next.
When a council disposes of or regenerates social housing, the decision is taken by democratically elected members accountable to local residents. Proceeds return to the Housing Revenue Account, the ringfenced public account through which councils manage their housing finances, and are reinvested locally.
When a housing association disposes of stock, none of those protections apply. Proceeds may leave the local area entirely, and any replacement homes built may be elsewhere and at higher rent levels, with no guarantee of like for like replacement. Any amendment extending these provisions to council landlords would be wrong in principle.
What we are asking for
The problems set out above share a common thread: councils and other registered providers, meaning housing associations and similar social landlords, are given neither the time nor the means to act. The six changes below would address that.
ASK ONE: Ensure the Commons amendment on notification delivers a full eight weeks (Bill amendment)
Four weeks is not enough time for a council to make such a substantial financial decision, which typically needs a formal cabinet decision. Eight weeks was tabled in the Lords as Amendment 38, and the Commons amendment should deliver it. Where a council or another registered provider registers an interest, the clock should stop to allow that process to conclude.
Notifications should also include tenure, purpose of disposal, property condition, energy efficiency rating, any adaptations for disabled residents, and whether the property was previously let at social or affordable rent.
ASK TWO: A social housing rescue fund (Government decision)
We are asking Government to establish a fund covering the difference between what a home is worth as social housing and its open market price. The housing association would still receive full market value, so there is no constraint on its asset management decisions.
Housing associations sometimes cite the cost of works as a reason to dispose. Councils would often rather take the home on, do the work and keep it as Social Rent, so the fund should also cover any works needed to bring a home up to the Decent Homes Standard.
Funding should be conditional on the property being relet at Social Rent, with priority for rural homes, adapted properties, and areas of high housing need. We will propose this to Treasury this Autumn.
ASK THREE: A right of first refusal for other registered providers (Bill amendment)
Clause 11 would require a housing association to notify other private registered providers in the area, but not to offer them the property. Notification alone does not keep a home in the social sector. Before selling on the open market, a provider should have to give other registered providers a genuine opportunity to buy.
ASK FOUR: Make public funding conditional on responsible disposal conduct (Government and Homes England decision)
Homes England should work with the sector, including councils and housing associations, to codesign a code of responsible disposal conduct, and make this a condition of accessing grant funding through the Social and Affordable Homes Programme.
ASK FIVE: Recover grant when a Social Rent home is disposed of (Government and Homes England decision)
Many social homes were built or acquired using government grant, awarded through Homes England or the Greater London Authority. When one of these homes is disposed of, the provider can currently keep that grant and recycle it into its own development programme.
Where a provider chooses to dispose of a Social Rent home, that option should be removed. The grant should be recovered by government and used to fund the rescue fund set out in Ask Two, so that money from a lost Social Rent home goes towards saving another.
ASK SIX: Record and publish the tenure of disposed homes (Bill amendment)
Open-market disposals are not published broken down by provider, area and tenure. The Regulator collects location and provider on every disposal notification but does not record the tenure of the home being sold.
Adding tenure to the notification form and publishing the data quarterly would allow proper scrutiny of the scale of the problem and give councils the evidence they need to reflect losses of Social Rent stock in their local housing strategy.
A note on the debt reclassification question
MPs who followed the Lords debates will know LCN originally sought a statutory right of first refusal at existing use value, covering councils as well as other registered providers. We have not pursued that in this Bill. A legally fixed sale price risks the Office for National Statistics reclassifying housing associations as public sector bodies, which would count their borrowing against government debt figures, and both the sector and Government want to avoid that. The rescue fund and our other asks are designed with this constraint in mind.
For further information and to discuss specific amendment wording please contact: Charlotte Maguire, Senior Policy Advisor, Local Councils Network. charlotte.maguire@local.gov.uk
You can download a PDF of this briefing here: LCN briefing on the Social Housing Bill – social housing disposals.
