The two protests outside Mayfair auction houses in the past week are throwing light on what Housing Associations (HAs) are doing to their housing stock in Central London when becoming empty, selling them off and reducing the amount of social housing available for our desperately needy communities.

Normally all the focus on the loss of social housing is on the impact of RTB’s on our Council housing stock but we should not forget what HAs have been up too as well on this front. According to the latest figures from Charted Institute of Housing (CIH) some 47,000 properties have been sold by HAs between 2012-2018 with Notting Hill Housing Group and Peabody Housing Trust dumping over 500 social rented homes each in that period via auctions. CIH anticipate that HA’s will shed another 71,000 social rented homes in the near future.

These demo’s will no doubt become regular occurrence till the HAs stop this unjustified practise.