Tories to abolish the council house

End of the road for council housing, say Tories

Council housing would be virtually abolished under the next Conservative government.

Shadow environment secretary Archie Norman said it was "not acceptable" in the long term for local authorities to provide homes.

Instead the Tories would hand over 3.3m houses and flats to housing associations, enabling the party to slash Labour's spending plans on housing.

Council housing is poor value for money says Archie Norman

The policy has been dubbed as "outrageous and cynical" by political opponents.

In an interview with Roof, the magazine of the housing charity Shelter, Mr Norman said allowing council housing was expensive and poor value for money.

"It ties up a huge amount of capital and maintenance and the cost of managing council housing is greater than it should be.

"It's very inefficient and the result for tenants is very poor."

Extra income

The transfer of 400,000 council homes to the voluntary and private sectors in the last 10 years had generated an additional £11.5bn of private investment, according to the party.

It is not acceptable that there is a long-term role for council ownership of housing

Archie Norman

Doing the same to the remaining 3.3m would generate an additional £100bn of private investment in Britain's housing stock, it said.

Between now and 2004, Labour intends to plough an extra £1.8bn into public housing.

Five year plan

Mr Norman said that figure would be cut within three years of the Tories taking power and, within five years, all councils would have to draw up plans to dispose of their housing stock, apart from those needed for special needs, such as sheltering refugees.

The changes would help the Conservatives reach their target of £8bn tax cuts.

Liberal Democrat housing spokesman Don Foster described the proposals as "the most outrageous and cynical pre-election Tory announcement yet".

He added: "With over 100,000 homeless households, and millions of people in inadequate housing, cuts in the national housing budget will hurt the least well off."