A council report lists 24 former council homes SNG has sold or is selling, in Overton, Whitchurch, the Candovers and parts of the town. Councillors discuss it on 18 November.
Housing association SNG has sold six former council homes in Basingstoke and Deane on the open market and has 18 more on the market or heading there, according to a borough council report. Overton and Whitchurch appear in every list.
The report goes to the council’s Resident Services Committee on Wednesday 18 November. It says the council has no power to stop the sales. Councillors asked for the report in September, as we reported at the time.
SNG, Sovereign Network Group, owns about 6,000 homes in the borough. Most of them were council houses until 1995, when the council transferred its whole stock of around 10,000 homes to two new housing associations. The other was what is now VIVID.
The 36 homes in the report
The council’s summary of SNG’s disposals lists 36 homes in three groups.
Bought by VIVID with council money, 2025/26 (12 homes)
- four two-bedroom houses and two three-bedroom houses
- six two-bedroom bungalows
- in Overton, Whitchurch, Steventon, Bishops Green, Brown Candover and Axford
These stayed as social housing. The council paid for them from unspent developer contributions for affordable housing, and SNG sold them to VIVID below full market value.
Sold at auction or on the open market, 2024/25 to 2026/27 (6 homes)
- a one-bedroom bungalow and a two-bedroom bungalow
- four three-bedroom houses
- in Overton, Whitchurch and Black Dam
On the market or proceeding to market now (18 homes)
- four flats, three with one bedroom and one with two
- eight bungalows, two with one bedroom and six with two
- two two-bedroom houses and four three-bedroom houses
- in Brighton Hill, Kings Furlong, Oakley, Overton, Whitchurch, Brown Candover and Preston Candover
The report says VIVID is considering buying some of the 18, in Oakley, Brighton Hill and Kings Furlong, with government grant. They would become temporary accommodation, so they would still leave the stock of permanent social housing.
Why SNG is selling
The report says SNG sells homes when they fall empty if it judges they cannot be brought up to its “Homes and Place” standard. A home’s energy performance certificate rating is a large part of that test. Officers were told the money is reinvested in other homes or in redevelopment.
SNG has not shared the detail of its assessment tool with the council. The report says the council understands it does not weigh local housing need, or whether a sold home could ever be replaced in that village.
SNG has excluded Buckskin and South Ham, where it has regeneration plans. Officers say that has made rural areas “hotspots”, naming Whitchurch, Overton and St Mary Bourne.
What the council has tried
The 1995 transfer deal was meant to keep the homes for local housing need “in perpetuity”. The report says changes to national law since 2008 have “eroded all impact” of those controls. Since 2017 housing associations have only had to notify the Regulator of Social Housing of a sale, not ask its consent.
The council’s steps so far, according to the report:
- a letter from the council leader, Councillor Paul Harvey, to SNG’s chair in July 2025, asking SNG to reconsider and pass its earmarked homes to VIVID. The letter is published with the report. The report says SNG’s reply “re-affirmed the association’s continued intent to dispose of social rent homes at market value”.
- the one-off VIVID purchase of 12 homes. The council says it has no spare money to repeat it.
- using housing register rules to get SNG to keep individual homes when tenants move, and brokering swaps between tenants so homes do not fall empty.
- lobbying through the Local Councils Network on the government’s Social Housing Bill.
The report says that, to the council’s knowledge, SNG has since been unwilling to sell to other providers at anything below market value.
The Social Housing Bill will not stop it
The Social Housing Bill is at committee stage in the Commons. It would make a housing association tell the council and other providers eight weeks before selling a social home outside the sector.
The report says that will only help if a council has cash ready to buy at short notice. The Bill gives councils no power to stop a sale and no right to buy.
VIVID, the borough’s other big landlord with about 7,000 homes here, has undertaken not to sell any in the borough.
Why it matters locally
The councillor who asked for the report, Councillor Chloe Ashfield of Whitchurch, Overton and Laverstoke ward, says 4,500 households are on the housing register. The council’s own housing allocations slides, for a separate committee on 12 November, give 4,450 in September 2026. Only 805 homes were advertised to them in 2025/26.
The council is also missing its target of 300 new affordable homes a year. It delivered 268 in 2025/26, and its report forecasts shortfalls of 65 this year and 114 in 2027/28. (The forecast rows in the report’s table do not add up to the totals shown, so treat those two figures as the council’s estimates.)
The report warns that fewer housing association homes could push up what the council spends on temporary accommodation.
What it means for you
- If you are an SNG tenant, the report describes SNG selling homes when they fall empty, not occupied ones.
- If you are on the housing register, the homes sold are ones that could otherwise have been let at social rent. Bungalows are among them, and the council says some homes may have been adapted with disabled facilities grants.
- If you want to have your say, the committee meets at 6.30pm on 18 November in the Deanes building at the council offices on London Road, and committee meetings are held in public. You can contact your ward councillor through the council’s councillor pages.
Councillor Ashfield has asked for SNG to be invited to the committee’s following meeting to answer questions.
We asked SNG for its response on 9 November and will add it here.
SNG is also behind the Camrose homes plan and handed over the former Beacon pub in South Ham for community use. For more on homes in the borough, see our Basingstoke house prices page and planning news.
Have your say