It shows a contemptible want of courage that Keir Starmer’s government fails to follow the examples of Scotland and Wales by simply ending the right-to-buy scam (Call it Thatcher’s timebomb: the great council housing selloff, a crisis hidden in plain sight, 13 February).
There are 700,000 long-term empty homes in England, which is almost double the number of homeless people. The temporary accommodation of these families is a needless drain on local governments’ stretched budgets. Some of these homes are in areas of high demand, such as London, and some are owned by councils, which are either are too cash-strapped or so depleted of in-house skills that they cannot get around to putting them into habitable condition.
