... to feel angry about single mother of 11 getting new house built for her!!

I have no idea what the criteria are for obtaining a council house but I assume that there are some and that these would include some kind of means testing.

Didn't work, Greatnan. One of those threads that just won't ass away.

Council housing is sold at a discount to existing tenants. Councils usually have a seller's clause stating that if the house is re-sold within a fixed period of between three to five years then the amount of discount must be repaid.

Just for information - if you bought your council house and then decided to sell it on after a year you had to repay some of the discount, the amount of discount you repaid got less the longer you kept the house. Not sure how long before you would no longer have to repay anything.

Thank you for putting another unreasonable gripe to bed, ga and sunseeker. Besides which, if it's allright for people who have always owned their own home to make a profit when they sell up, why shouldn't the same be allright in due course for people who have only managed to buy a house because of discounted initial prices? Most people who bought their council house then spent money on improvements. Where I used to live in Oxfordshire you could tell which houses had been bought by their occupants and which hadn't by the level of upkeep and improvements.

Not that I think council houses should have been sold off unless the money raised from their sale was used to provide more housing for the poorer end of society.

absent Here is a link to council house allocation policies in Scotland, from Shelter. One of the things they are not allowed to consider is income and any property or goods that you own.

Quite right, Bags and others. The money should have been spent directly on building more houses of the size and type that are needed. When I first heard of the introduction of the right to buy I thought it a good idea becuse it would free up money to modernise and rebuild, but that was expressly forbidden. Politicians don't often live in council houses so they must have thought that phaseing them out would phase out the need for them.

I lived in a council house with my family until I married. My parents could not have bought a house at any point in their lives until about ten years after that, when they bought a small semi-detached bungalow. Not long after that, my father was made redundant.

That seems bonkers Elegran. Surely the whole point of social housing was to provide homes for those unable to afford commercial rents or mortgages*. Now I understand why – and how – the landlady of the house next to one I used to live in lived in a council house although she owned about half a dozen large rental properties in an expensive part of London.

* I do appreciate that some specific social needs should also be taken into consideration.

It is not in fashion these days to means test anyone for anything, absent. Heaven forbid that someone should get social housing because they can't afford to buy. Asking "obtrusive questions" about finances is not on, though obtrusive questions about all other aspects of their lives is OK.

Equality is all!

As far as financial matters are concerned, I'd say we may all be equal, but some people are more equal than others.

But it is a reason for no-one to automatically regard those in council houses as a kind of underclass of paupers all on benefits and raising their illegitimate children at state expense or dealing drugs. There are a lot of respectable working people there who provide for themselves and their familes and live happy, productive lives, but do not have the capital to buy, or do not want the hassle of owning a house.

I sometimes feel there are indeed two nations, neither of them understanding the other.

absent the criteria for getting on the housing list, never mind eventually getting a house, are on a points basis. Ill health and overcrowding are usually high on the list of criteria. Sometimes it's a mystery to me why some people are offered accommodation and others who seem equally deserving are not. I don't believe that people who have enough money to buy property seek to have themselves put on the list as - sadly - there is still a stigma about living on a 'council' estate and indeed, those who have bought and tried to sell their council houses often have difficulty selling them for this very reason.

I think the first council houses were a response to the truly dreadful housing conditions that existed .About 1925 my grandmother was delighted to be allocated a new council house with three bedrooms, a separate living-room, and her own kitchen and bathroom. They had been renting two rooms with shared kitchen and toilet in an old terraced house which backed onto the yard of a livery stable. My mother remembered having to pass in the middle of the night through the shared kitchen (plus drunken house owner) on her way to the toilet in the yard, disturbing rats on her way.

Then after WW2 the nation's housing stock was terribly depleted courtesy of Herr Hitler. Demobbed servicemen needed homes for their families who had been living with relatives. Houses were built fast but waiting lists were still long. Prefabs were a quick (and popular) answer but in time they came to the end of their useful lives.

In the draft allocation policy of the local authority in which I volunteer at CAB, I found the following paragraph:

'There are some categories of people from abroad that the law says local
authorities cannot allocate properties to. This is a complex area of law, but
includes groups of people such as asylum seekers and people not habitually
resident in the UK or common travel area.'

As this was written last year, it pre-dates Cameron's edict about immigrants not getting on the housing list until they had been in the country for two years. I suspect he also meant migrants from Bulgaria and Romania and that might be subject to challenge in the European Court.

I think you are right, Ana and there is another similar point. One unintended result of the right-to-buy policy was that most large local authorities have properties that are hard to let, for whatever reason. A friend of my DS was offered and took a flat when his sister and partner had a baby and their house was technically and actually overcrowded. The flat was basically in good condition but the area and the immediate neighbours made it feel very unsafe, which it was. If you are prepared to take a property like this or you are homeless, there's usually no waiting list. If recent arrivals do get social or council housing, this is the kind of accommodation they often get.

Anno!!

Had me worried there, Lilygran!

When we were allocated a council house on an 'overspill' estate when I was 13, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The house we left in Salford was plagued by mice and cockroaches and had no proper kitchen, just a 'slop-stone' sink in the covered in yard.
We only got the house because my father had been off work for a year with suspected TB - it turned out to be emphysema and he died five years later.
He was a fitter's mate (a glorified labourer) and my mother was a hand sewer in a raincoat factory. He was unemployed for several years in the 1930s. There was no way they could ever have saved for the deposit on a house - we lived hand to mouth - no bank account and a 'tick' account at the local grocer's shop.
When the right to buy was brought in (please google 'Dame Shirley Porter) many people took the chance and spent a small fortune on redecorating, adding porches, etc. I don't think any of them contemplating selling the house they had bought as they were very happy with the estate.
There are thousands of 'two up/two downs' in former industrial areas which could be made very serviceable if any council had the nous to do it. Not everybody wants/needs three bedrooms and a garden.

Who cares? In the final analysis all the hot and cold air blown here changes nothing does it? It's like the forum. We are encou-raged to add our views but nobody does anything about them. At sixty one I'm getting fed up with everything in existence and this is just another lack of control problem. The world is overpopulated by the stupid because the sensible have the sense to put the brakes on their lives.

paige would it be rude to ask if you have children?

paige What exactly would you like us to do about it?

I didn't think you were allowed to sell your council house after you had bought it, for 2 or 3 years anyway.
May be wrong - it may be a year - not sure.

The paper today quoted the following statistics.
There are 1.35 million families with children in which at least one adult claims out of work benefit. 190 of them have more than 10 children. Rather suggests that very large families are newsworthy because they are very rare, not because they are taking over the world.

When our "picturesque" country cottage was repossessed we were very grateful to be given a council house which had a proper bathroom, central heating and no damp !!! We were only there for 6 years but it was a welcome safety net while we got ourselves back together.

I think this:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/03/dont-get-mad-about-use-of-philpotts-tarnish-poor

says it all about the press demonising the poor, and twisting perceptions about welfare abuse.

Thanks for that Joan. It's an excellent article which I'll share on Facebook.

Thanks , Joan - I hope all our members read this article.