The Labor mayors of the Liverpool and Manchester regions have said they want to see more social housing built in their regions.

In May, Greater Manchester leader Andy Burnham called on the then Conservative government to suspend RTB on new builds after losing 500 social homes to the scheme in 2022.

He argued that if tenants could buy the planned homes, it would be “like trying to fill a bathtub without the plug.”

In Merseyside, virtually all of the former council housing stock has been transferred to housing associations over the past two decades.

But Metropolitan Mayor Steve Rotheram says registered social landlords (RSLs) have inherited some of the problems that arose with RTB.

It says one Merseyside RSL had lost around a third of its homes to sales to tenants in the decade since the housing stock was transferred.

People who are RSL tenants can buy their homes under “preserved” RTB if they lived in their homes when the council owned them.

And once someone has lived in an RSL property for three years, they can apply for Right to Acquire.

Rotheram says cheaper borrowing rates for RSLs and a moratorium on sales would help boost social housing growth.

“There are not going to be many houses built for someone to come in three or four years and buy them below market value,” he says.

“How we deal with this is part of our growth plan that goes to the government, and now we are trying to see if we can work with (Rayner) to put forward proposals.”

Blackpool Council’s cabinet member for economy and built environment, Mark Smith, is clear that while the money generated from RTB sales is used to support various housing investments, the RTB income his council receives “does not are sufficient to replace the lost social rental housing. .

And he says that even with changes such as the government giving councils more flexibility to allow RTB receipts to be used alongside cash from other sources, such as funds provided by developers obtaining planning permission for private projects, there are still some red tape along the way. use different types of financing together to build municipal housing.

“We do the best we can within the parameters of the policy as it currently exists, but there is always room for improvement,” he says.