According to the Guardian, the government has backed plans to introduce a new household income threshold above which social tenants must pay full market rent – dubbed the “pay to stay” scheme.
The government is expected to say that rent subsidy will be capped at a household income of £60,000.
The scheme will be applied to all housing association and council properties, and the government is expected to go ahead with a consultation paper next month on the scheme.
The rules will end what ministers will say is an unfair system that sees taxpayers subsidising the rent of tenants who could afford to pay full market prices.
The Guardian said that ministers have been looking at a range of proposals to make social housing more flexible, including the removal of lifetime tenancies and replacing them with fixed-term tenancies. It added that social housing tenants can also no longer pass their homes to their children.
The Department for Communities and Local government said there are as many as 34,000 council homes occupied by tenants with a household income of £60,000. The public subsidy for those homes is around £122m a year, the department has estimated.
Previously, ministers suggested an income limit of £100,000 but figures showed it would only affect around 6,000 households and the total cost of this annual subsidy would be £21.6m.
Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union who is paid more than £100,000 a year lives in a social rented home with a rent reported to be around £150 a week.
