THE Government may be asked to cut the maximum discount available to York council tenants wanting to buy their homes.

A report to City of York Council's housing scrutiny board suggests that the authority might follow the example set by some councils in the south-east where - in the face of great housing pressures - the maximum discount under right-to-buy legislation has been reduced from £24,000 to £16,000.

But another option would be to press for an unidentified, smaller reduction. The board will discuss which option to proceed with at a meeting on March 7.

If agreement is reached, the recommendation would be put to the council's executive member for housing, who would make the final decision.

Board chairman Coun David Livesley said the extra receipts generated through cutting the discount would be used to invest in housing stock.

He stressed that if the changes went ahead, they should not affect people already in the process of buying their homes.

The board is also proposing to replace the traditional points system for allocating council housing by a "band-based system." Under this, residents would be placed in up to five broad bands of need. Within each band, individual priorities could still be given and the length of time on the waiting list can be taken into account, says a report to a meeting of the board on March 7.

The report says incentives could be offered to assist people "under-occupying" properties in moving to smaller accommodation. Population zones serving communities with a similar outlook or profile might be beneficial - for example, the introduction of "quiet zones."

Coun Livesley said the proposals resulted from wrestling for several months with the problem of finding more effective ways of allocating York's social housing to people in housing need.

The report says "right to buy" has significantly reduced the overall volume of housing stock under the council's control, and altered the diversity of homes - with housing having sold and small bedsits and flats left unsold, but it has also enabled many householders to become home owners, who would otherwise have been unable to afford it.

Updated: 10:11 Thursday, February 24, 2005