Millionaires snap up 40% of Wandsworth council homes

While ordinary London families are stuck on waiting lists for council houses, wealthy private landlords have bought 6,180 of the south London borough's 15,874 council homes, the union says.

And many of these homes are owned by the same private landlord. Research found that one private landlord owned 93 ex-local authority homes and another owned 32. Almost 1,000 landlords owned more than one.

This means almost 40 per cent of ex-council homes are being rented out to private tenants at a huge profit to the landlords who own them.

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: "This investigation lays bare the harsh reality of the exploitation of our social housing stock.

"It shows private businesses making vast profits from the public purse while the people these homes were built for sit on waiting lists that never move.

"To add insult to injury many are using offshore tax havens to avoid paying tax on these profits."

The union used the Land Registry to investigate who the landlords are in 69 blocks of flats in Wandsworth. It turned up a long list of property magnates, estate agents and individual millionaires.

Great Grimsby Labour MP Austin Mitchell, who sits on Defend Council Housing's national committee, told the Star that "right-to-buy racketeering" is a problem all over the country.

He warned that it is fuelling the housing crisis and said the government needs to act to curb the problem and aim to build 300,000 new affordable homes over the next two years in order to keep the economy in check.

Mr Kenny slammed Thatcher's right-to-buy legacy: "These homes were built and designed to be rented by ordinary London families.

"The investigation exposes Thatcher's flagship policy of right-to-buy for individuals as nothing more than a charter for the exploitation of our social housing for private profit.

"Her plan to create a home owning democracy has turned into a buy-to-let bonanza."