by Lamiat Sabin

HOUSING campaigners highlighted the mockery of the right-to-buy scheme yesterday following revelations that a Tory council spent £90 million on clawing back former social homes after selling them off.

Westminster Council repurchased 295 properties at an average market price of £300,000 each, the Mirror reported, after they were heavily discounted and sold 30 years ago.

The borough was also embroiled in the “homes for votes” scandal, in which Dame Shirley Porter was found guilty of gerrymandering and allowing council tenants in marginal wards to buy their central London flats if they were likely to vote Conservative.

Now, with more than 2,300 households on its waiting list, the council is desperately shelling out tens of millions to regain possession under subsidiary company Westminster Community Homes.

The short-sighted Tory policy also escalated emergency housing costs to £41.8m in 2013-14 alone in order to put up homeless families in temporary bed and breakfast accommodation.

In yet another plot to bribe voters, Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to extend the right to buy to 1.3 million housing association tenants.

Defend Council Housing chair Eileen Short slammed the pledge as “complete nonsense” that “plays on the hopes and fears of social tenants.”

She added that although Westminster is doing the right thing by reinstating much-needed council housing, we need “a public investment programme for housing that is secure and genuinely affordable.”

A third of council housing stock was lost during the 1980s and ’90s under right to buy.

With massive discounts of up to 50 per cent, some of the smaller Westminster ex-local authority flats that are now worth £260,000 were sold for just over £11,000.

GMB regional secretary Paul Hayes said: “This is yet another chapter in the massively expensive Tory housing policy mistakes over the sale of council houses.

“GMB wants to see money from the £23 billion spent every year on housing benefit being spent to build new council houses.

“Allowing councils to build council houses is the only solution to the housing crisis for lower-paid workers who can never afford to buy. This was Labour’s traditional policy and it needs to be reintroduced.”