 Council homes are required to meet quality standards by 2015 |
Tenants voting against council home transfers are turning down a "free gift" of Treasury cash, Communities Minister Malcolm Chisholm has said. His comments came after residents in Renfrewshire and Stirling rejected plans to transfer local authority homes to new housing associations.
Mr Chisholm said stock transfer was the only way councils could have their housing debt written off.
Tenants in Edinburgh have also voted against such a move.
Mr Chisholm told the Scottish Parliament's communities committee that votes against stock transfer could have "serious implications" for the Scottish Executive.
"It's like turning down a ginormous free gift from the Treasury, which is really very, very serious because we can't write off that scale of debt," he said.
Ballots in pipeline
Stock transfers have already taken place in Glasgow, the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway, and several smaller-scale transfers are in the pipeline.
A housing stock transfer has also been approved in the Western Isles, while in Argyll and Bute tenants have voted in favour but the transfer has yet to take place.
Ballots have still to take place in Inverclyde and the Highlands.
Critics of the policy, which include the Scottish Socialist Party, have described it as privatisation.
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