Cllr Una O’Halloran

SHE almost needed a jingle: We’ll buy any council home.

It would have capped housing chief Councillor Una O’Halloran’s excitement at a cabinet meeting on Thursday – as she announced Islington would buy back council flats from any lease­holders thinking of selling up.

“We will buy anywhere. We’ve got lots of estates: EC1, N19, you name it. If the property is there and you’re selling it, come to us,” she told the council chamber.

“Anybody who is out there who is thinking of selling, go to the council because it’s quicker than going to your estate agent.”

She was speaking as Islington confirmed plans to recover more than 300 council homes lost to the Right to Buy system.

The cash has come from the government’s Levelling Up department which has allocated £81million to the council with the view that homeless refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine need temporary housing, and an acknowledgement that there has been extra pressure on demand.

Islington had already committed to buying back 100 flats. Officers are now searching for possible properties and reminding leaseholders across the borough that the opportunity of a quick sale to a reliable buyer is now on the table.

Cllr O’Halloran said: “People have already said to me: ‘I want to sell my council home back to the council.’ This makes us the biggest buy-back programme, the largest in the country. I’m so proud of that.

The controversial Right to Buy scheme allows people to buy their council home with a discount on the market rate. There is a short period where tenants who become leaseholders cannot sell the property on the private market.

The scheme has been criticised because of the loss of homes then available to local authorities.

Cllr O’Halloran said: “Islington always looks to where we can get money to do these things. This will make such a difference to people’s lives: anybody fleeing, we know we are a borough of sanctuary, we welcome refugees, and people who have experienced homelessness.”

Housing department director Jed Young said: “We’ve started to promote this. We’ve got more than 70 properties under offer at the moment so we are making good progress.

“We will be proactively communi­cating with all existing leaseholders and making the offer to purchase from them effectively en masse, stimulating interest and making sure they are aware that we are poised and ready to buy.”

So why won’t Sir Keir halt it?

LABOUR councillors applauded themselves and council officers in the Town Hall chamber on Thursday after agreeing the plan to ask leaseholders if they are interested in selling their homes.

Green councillor Ernestas Jegorovas-Armstrong told the meeting: “It was a terrible policy to begin with and should have been ended in a generation.”

Support for the policy has continued through successive Conservative and Labour governments, so all eyes are on what a new administration headed by Sir Keir Starmer might do if elected next year.

Labour has not announced any plans to halt Right to Buy but has said it will look at the size of the discount and how sold homes are replaced.