A TORY plot to privatise thousands more low-rent homes via “right-to-buy” will decimate stock and could leave councils facing a crippling financial black hole.

That was the verdict yesterday of a dossier on London housing following PM David Cameron’s move to ramp up the discount for council tenants to purchase their home.

Around 800,000 are on housing waiting lists in the capital but just 10,300 new units will be built in London by 2023/4 under current plans.

Construction will be dwarfed by the 16,100 expected to be flogged off if current rates continue, the report by London Labour suggests.

The party’s London Assembly housing spokesman Tom Copley said new rules to make it quicker and cheaper for tenants to snap up their home had led “to a devastating scale of reduction in council housing stock.”

The government “taxes” council home sell-offs at 30 per cent, with central revenues up sharply since it passed new rules in 2013 allowing sales at £100,000 less than estimated market value.

But up to half of ex-council properties have since passed into the hands of profiteering private landlords.

And while councils receive an immediate windfall of 70 per cent only two-thirds of that goes back into new low-rent housing.

Declining rental income from dwindling stock also threatens local authority finances.

One council, Croydon, estimated that annual sell-offs of 100 or more homes a year would see its day-to-day housing budget plunge into deficit within a decade.

Construction union Ucatt general secretary Steve Murphy demanded cash for construction and the abolition of right to buy.

“There is simply not enough social housing to meet need,” he said.

“Selling off an existing scarce stock is only making the situation worse.”

Welsh Labour has proposed to scrap right to buy if it is re-elected next year, while Scotland will abolish it in 2017.

Yet the Tories are reported to be planning a further expansion of the sell-off scheme in England despite crippling shortages of low-rent homes.

It comes ahead of the mass March for Homes demonstration on Saturday with protesters rallying outside City Hall calling on London Mayor Boris Johnson and councils to address the chronic shortage of social housing in the capital.