Several council homes on the Stirling Prize-winning Goldsmith Street in Norwich could be sold at a discount just five years after they were built, Dezeen can reveal as part of our Social Housing Revival series.
A Freedom of Information Act request submitted by Dezeen to Norwich City Council found that seven of the homes in the award-winning social-housing development are already subject to Right to Buy applications, having only been completed in 2019.
Right to Buy is a government policy that allows council-housing tenants in England to purchase their homes at a significant discount.
Goldsmith Street was designed by Mikhail Riches and completed in 2019
First introduced in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, it is highly contentious. Proponents argue that Right to Buy offers a route into home ownership for people who would otherwise not be able to afford it, while detractors claim the policy has decimated Britain's precious social-housing stock.
Right to Buy "a disaster"
Designed by architecture studio Mikhail Riches, Goldsmith Street is the only social-housing scheme to have won the Stirling Prize ? awarded to the UK's best new building ? in the competition's 26-year history.
It comprises 105 homes arranged into high-density terraced streets close to Norwich city centre.
All the homes are built to Passivhaus standards, with residents' energy bills reportedly 70 per cent cheaper than the average UK household.
"That's quite a lot," Mik...