A CONSULTATION into how councils spend money from Right to Buy sales has been launched in a bid to boost the number of council houses being built.

Local government secretary James Brokenshire launched the consultation, which sets out proposals to make it easier for councils to replace properties sold under Right to Buy and build more affordable homes.

Earlier this year, research for the LGA showed that two thirds of councils in England will have no chance of replacing the same number of homes sold off under Right to Buy in five years' time without "significant" restructuring of the scheme.

Around 12,224 houses were sold under the scheme last year, but the study showed that by 2023, councils would only be able to replace 2,000 of them.

Current rules including a significant portion of all receipts being handed over to the Treasury rather than the communities in which the homes are sold are hampering the ability of local authorities to reinvest in housing, said the LGA.

In 1998, Blackburn with Darwen had more than 11,000 council houses on its books.

But just three years later that number fell to only 252, as the council transferred the vast majority to Twin Valley, now known as Together Housing.

Today, the local authority has no council housing stock whatsoever.

Blackburn with Darwen Council regeneration boss, Cllr Phil Riley, previously said Right to Buy was not the biggest obstacle to falling council housing stock.

He said if the Government was really serious about hitting its housing targets, it should remove the powers preventing local authorities from building council houses.

The council is currently working with social housing providers on plans at sites near the old Griffin pub and in Alaska Street, Blackburn, which would see hundreds of new affordable homes built in the borough.

Responding to the announcements, Judith Blake, who is the Local Government Association's housing spokesman, said: "This green paper is a step towards delivering more social homes but it is only a small step, compared with the huge and immediate need for more genuinely affordable homes.

"There is a desperate need to reverse the decline in council housing over the past few decades."

She added: "The Government must go beyond the limited measures announced so far, scrap the housing borrowing cap, and enable all councils, across the country, to borrow to build once more.

"This would trigger the renaissance in council house-building which will help people to access genuinely affordable housing."