BETTING THE HOUSE

摘要

There's no doubt that the big built environment issue of the election campaign last week was Conservative Party plans to extend the historic right to buy to housing associations. So to kick off our in-depth coverage of the election countdown this week, we have a look at what this policy could really mean for construction of social housing in the UK. Certainly the social housing sector was very quick to pour scorn on the proposals from the Conservatives, with one housing association chief executive saying he would "definitely" launch a legal challenge against any such moves, and many others saying it would jeopardise the hard-won financial position of housing associations which allows them to develop new homes. The backlash from the policy's supporters in the press was brutal and equally rapid: "hypocritical" housing association chief executives opposing the policy found pictures of themselves and their "lavish" houses plastered on the front page of the Daily Mail next to their "six figure salaries".