Council tenants in Moray will not have an automatic right to purchase their homes for at least ten years following a decision made today.
The move by the Communities Committee takes advantage of Housing (Scotland) Act, which recently gave local authorities in Scotland a right to make their own ‘pressured area designations’.
More than half of council housing stock had been sold to sitting tenants in Moray since right to buy legislation was introduced by the Thatcher government in the 1980s.
There are currently around 3000 names on the waiting list for council homes despite Moray having already suspended right to buy for specific geographical areas or house sizes.
Chair of the communities committee, Councillor Eric McGillivray, said that the council needed to build more than 420 new homes each year for the next ten years if they were to meet existing demand that sees an average of eight applications for each home that becomes available.
Councillor McGillivray added: “We will not be able to build at that rate which is why we had to look at a blanket pressured area status for the whole of Moray to ensure that the council housing stock that we currently have remains in circulation.
“Where there has already been pressured area status it has enabled us to build new houses in the knowledge that they cannot be bought.”
The decision follows consultation with existing tenants – 58% of those who responded indicated they were in favour of pressured area status being applied throughout Moray.