Housing and Planning Bill

But councils with retained stock—and that stock is not coming forward as fast as government would wish—will have a levy in view until their own vacant stock is forcibly sold. That levy has to come from somewhere. Why on earth should some local authorities be expected to fund RTB discounts out of their money when other local authorities are not? What is the basic fairness in that? I absolutely take the noble Lord’s point that this is a redistribution from some local authorities but it means that those with retained stock will have to pay double the size of the levy or double the number of sales to make good the fact that a very large proportion of more rural district councils do not have any retained stock.