HOUSING chiefs remain concerned at Government plans to give 1.3 million people the right to buy their own homes.

The Conservatives’ pledge to extend Margaret Thatcher’s flagship Right to Buy to housing association tenants was a key moment of the General Election campaign.

Now the policy is in the Queen’s Speech, extending discounts of up to 70 per cent or £77,900 to 500,000 tenants already entitled to some discounts and another 800,000 not previously eligible.

The National Housing Federation slammed the idea as “like trying to fill a bathtub with the plug taken out”.

The County Durham Housing Group, which took over 18,400 Durham County Council homes last month (April), said the policy did nothing to increase housing supply and address the “overall shortage of social housing”.

A spokeswoman added freezing working age benefits and removing automatic entitlement to housing benefit for those aged 18 to 21 would impact tenants’ ability to pay their rent and other bills.

Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter, said a plan to solve the housing shortage had failed to materialise.

“You simply can’t solve an affordability crisis by selling off what little affordable housing we have left,” he added.

However, the Government has announced a “right to build”, promising people the right to be allocated land with planning permission for them to self-build or commission a local builder.