A new expose by The Big Issue has revealed how councils are wasting money due to Right to Buy loopholes.

Within just a few years Newham council sold and bought back 130 properties, transferring £23 million of taxpayer money to landlords.

In one instance in 2015, the council sold a house for £49k, only to buy the same house 6 years later for £320k – more than 6 times as much as they sold it for.

This is because of a loophole meaning that if the property is sold back to the council after 5 years of ownership, the owner doesn’t have to pay back any of the council’s discount.

While roughly 350,000 people are homeless in the UK, councils are wasting taxpayer funds to make some people a lot of money.

Homelessness is a political choice. We can stop homelessness, it just wouldn’t be profitable.

The UK had a large stock of council housing following post-war rebuilding, but under Thatcher’s Right to Buy we sold a large proportion of it. 

This was an experiment, and today we can see how it has failed – we must admit that and move forward.

We must build new council-owned housing, and house everyone who needs it. The money is out there, but it must be transferred from the few, for the many.