Local Councils Network urges action from MPs to protect homes for local communities

English housing associations have sold 25,000 social and affordable homes to private buyers who do not live in them since 2018/19, new research reveals.

In 2024/25 alone, they sold 5,250 homes – the highest annual figure on record, up 89% in just two years – making the Government’s task harder as it seeks to deliver the biggest boost to social housing in a generation. These private sales are on top of homes sold to tenants under the Right to Acquire or Right to Buy schemes.

The Government has committed billions in grant funding to help housing associations and councils as part of a 10-year programme aiming for 180,000 new Social Rent homes. But the new Freedom of Information analysis by the Local Councils Network (LCN) shows the Social Rent stock is being sold off by housing associations to private buyers at a faster rate than ever before.

Although many housing associations and councils sell homes for legitimate reasons, such as to fund a wider regeneration scheme, there is currently no requirement for housing associations to reinvest proceeds locally or in homes for Social Rent, meaning many communities lose out.

The Local Councils Network is calling on MPs to use the Social Housing Bill, which had its Third Reading on Tuesday, 1 September, to protect this housing for local communities.

LCN used the Freedom of Information Act to ask the Regulator of Social Housing for the total number of the disposal notifications by local authority area which registered providers of social housing are required to give before selling such homes. These homes are nearly all sold at full market price, which councils tell LCN neither they nor any other social landlord can realistically match.

LCN’s member councils tell us that housing for Social Rent – the most affordable for tenants – has been disproportionately lost through sales by some housing associations. Homes for Affordable Rent, which is set at 80% of the local private market rental level, have been relatively unaffected. Social Rent is around £44 a week, or £2,300 a year, cheaper for a single family than Affordable Rent, and is often the only genuinely affordable option for people on the lowest incomes.

As Social Rent stock shrinks, councils are left with fewer places to house families needing housing, increasing councils’ bill for temporary accommodation. Member councils tell LCN that families in temporary accommodation are increasingly being refused Affordable Rent homes by housing associations because the rent is not deemed affordable to the family, leaving them stuck in expensive temporary accommodation for longer.

Even when the proceeds of a sale are reinvested by housing associations, there is no requirement that it funds Social Rent, or housing anywhere near the community that lost it. Regulator of Social Housing figures show the wider picture: in 2024/25, housing associations’ net gain in Social Rent homes was 2,864, around 7% of their total net gain across all tenures. The remaining 93% made up of around 23,000 Affordable Rent homes and nearly 14,000 low-cost home ownership homes – tenures which are out of reach for many households on council waiting lists or in temporary accommodation.

Cllr Paul Harvey, Social Housing Spokesperson for the Local Councils Network, said:

“With 1.34 million households on social housing waiting lists and temporary accommodation numbers at a record high, every home lost results in more misery for people needing high-quality, secure housing and extra expense for the public sector.

“It cannot be right that some housing associations are selling homes in the parts of the country where they’re most needed and failing to replace them with homes nearby that are equally affordable.

“It would be a disaster if the biggest social housing building programme in a generation was undermined by the loss of existing social homes.

“We’re calling on the Government to ensure public funding for new social housing goes only to those social landlords which manage disposals responsibly, so the new homes being built aren’t cancelled out by the ones being lost.”

The Local Councils Network is calling on the Government to:

• Introduce a statutory right of first refusal for councils and other registered providers, at existing use value, giving them a genuine ability to buy at risk homes;

• Give councils and other registered providers more time and better information before a sale goes through, so they have a realistic chance to buy the property themselves;
• Set up a rescue fund that councils and housing associations can apply to when buying back an at-risk home, covering the gap between its social housing value and its full market price;

• Require the true scale of disposals to be properly published, broken down by tenure and area;

• Make public funding for new social housing conditional on housing associations following a responsible disposal code of conduct;

• Close the current gap in grant recovery rules, so that where a Social Rent home is disposed of, grant recovered by the Government must be reinvested in a replacement Social Rent home in the same area.

 

Case studies

Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council investigated disposals in its area and found the properties sold on the open market by a large national housing association, which owns stock in 90 English local authority areas, were all Social Rent homes. Several of these were originally transferred from the council to the housing association decades ago on the understanding they would stay social housing.

South Hams District Council and West Devon Borough Council, two neighbouring authorities, have together seen 138 homes sold since 2022/23 (49 in South Hams, 89 in West Devon) from a single landlord. Although the landlord has re-provided homes and overall grown its housing stock in the council area, most of the new homes have been built close to the districts’ boundary with Plymouth. This is in a new town and not in the predominantly rural or coastal area where the loss occurs.

There has been a significant loss of social homes in more expensive areas such as Dartmouth and Salcombe, which have a particularly high housing need. The villages of Bondleigh, Highampton, Broadwoodkelly and Stowford have lost all their social housing.

Cllr Denise O’Callaghan, Executive Member for Housing at South Hams District Council, said: “In the South Hams, the impact of losing social housing is often felt acutely in our smaller rural and coastal communities, where housing options are already extremely limited. Once a social home is lost, it can be incredibly difficult to replace because of land availability, development constraints and the high cost of housing in many parts of the district.

“Strong and sustainable communities rely on people from all walks of life being able to live locally, including care workers, retail staff, hospitality employees and young families. Protecting existing social housing is therefore not just a housing issue, it is essential to the long-term viability of our villages, towns and local economy.”

Cllr Mark Renders, Lead Member for Housing at West Devon Borough Council, said: “The loss of social housing has consequences that reach far beyond the properties themselves. It affects community resilience, access to local services and the ability of residents to remain close to their support networks.

“We need to make sure that properties in rural areas are replaced with properties in those same areas rather than the borough’s larger towns to reflect local need properly.

“We want to see a system that gives local areas a stronger voice when social homes are being disposed of and greater confidence that any homes lost will be replaced in a way that reflects the make-up of our communities. For rural districts such as West Devon, maintaining a supply of genuinely affordable housing is critical to ensuring our communities remain vibrant, balanced and inclusive for future generations.”