SOCIAL housing tenants in South Yorkshire could be given the right to demand their landlord sells their home and uses the cash to buy them another property elsewhere in the country, under Tory proposals.
A housing blueprint published by the Conservatives in Westminster states housing associations and social landlords could be forced to buy homes in others parts of the country if their tenants choose to relocate.
The scheme, which will be trialled
in five areas if the Tories win the next election, will only be open to tenants who have a "record of five years good behaviour".
The new properties would continue to be managed by tenants' original landlords - which means housing associations and social landlords in South Yorkshire could be responsible for managing a portfolio of properties spread across the country.
A document announcing the plans stated: "It could help social tenants move to take up jobs, or to be near an elderly relative who needs care, or near grandparents to help with childcare.
"The social benefits will also be significant.
"The Right to Move will lead to greater variation in the tenure mix of neighbourhoods across the country and an influx of owner-occupiers coming into what are often near mono-tenure social housing estates."
But Sheffield Brightside MP David Blunkett today branded the proposals "clumsy and ideological".
He told The Star: "It would mean that the housing association would have no choice over where it wanted to configure its housing - management costs would also go up.
"It would reduce the flexibility of the housing associations to have housing where the need is greatest."
Neil O'Brien, the director of the centre-right think tank Policy Exchange, backed the blueprint, saying: "Our own work on housing has already strongly made the case both for far more local powers so that communities get the kinds of homes they need, as well as giving social housing tenants the opportunity to exercise choice over where they live, find a job and raise a family."
Other plans unveiled in the Tory's housing green paper included allowing villages and towns to create Local Housing Trusts, which would draw up new housing developments without having to go through normal planning procedures.
Parishes would have to hold a vote on forming such a trust and would need 90 per cent of local people to back the idea. They would only be allowed to expand a village or town by up to 10 per cent in size.
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