A SCHEME to offer council tenants the right to buy their homes at half price will escalate Oxford’s looming housing crisis, it was warned last night.

Most of the 8,000 tenants living in council homes will be able to get a 50 per cent discount if they buy their homes under the Government’s relaunched Right to Buy scheme, announced this week.

Ed Turner, deputy leader of Oxford City Council, warned the scheme would further escalate Oxford’s housing crisis, with 6,287 people already on the housing waiting list.

He said: “This is a throwback to the Thatcher era and it will make the housing shortage in Oxford a whole lot worse.

“The Government claims council homes will be replaced if they are sold, but has not made a commitment on whether they will be replaced in the same area.

“It is very difficult to tell how many people will take this up.

“It is going to make it much harder for Oxford to meet the housing challenge, if we are going to lose a lot of properties and have our income stream hit.”

Mum-of-three Lissiea Davidson, 46, a carer from Haldane Road, Blackbird Leys, said she was interested in the offer.

She added: “My partner and I will certainly look at the details to see how affordable it would be.

“At the moment, we pay about £475 a month for a three-bedroom house, which is cheaper than private rent, and we have a secured tenancy so we could stay for life if we wanted to.”

Blackbird Leys parish council chairman Gordon Roper, 73, bought his three-bedroom council home in Samphire Road, Blackbird Leys, under Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s Right to Buy scheme.

He sold it seven years ago to move with wife Ann to a three-bedroom house in Garsington, and said: “People should investigate this new scheme because it could get them on the property ladder.

“I put down a £100 deposit for a mortgage to buy the house in Blackbird Leys and paid it off in 14 years. We made a hell of a profit when we sold it, but put all the money into buying the new house.”

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith said: “There are big dangers in Oxford’s high-cost housing market, where there is a lot of money to be made by buying council houses at the big discounts the Government is proposing and then selling them on.

“I am concerned about whether the Government will be able to provide a new home in Oxford for each one sold, and I have tabled questions in Parliament to press them on this.”

Oxford West and Abingdon MP Nicola Blackwood welcomed the proposal and said: “Constituents tell me about their difficulties in getting on the housing ladder, and we need to be finding ways to try to address these issues.”

An estimated two million council tenants nationwide bought their houses under the original scheme, which was launched by Margaret Thatcher in 1980 and ended in 1998. That meant tenants could get discounts of up to 60 per cent.

Currently, tenants get only a 15 per cent discount on their house’s market value if they buy their homes.