Leading public finance experts have warned uncertain assumptions around the Conservative's flagship manifesto Right to Buy commitment could result in a counterproductive further depletion of the nation's housing stock were the policy adopoted.

Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies into Conservative plans to extend Right to Buy to up to 1.3 million housing association tenants examines how this would mesh with the second distinct policy requiring councils to sell their most expensive housing stock as they become vacant to raise £4.5bn a year.

The assumption behind this figure is that there are 210,000 ‘expensive' council properties in existence, of which 15,000 would fall vacant each year.