Housing experts have lined up today to attack Conservative plans to extend the Right to Buy scheme to 1.3 million housing assocation tenants as measures which 'don't stack up.

The rebuttal comes ahead of today's publication of the Conservative manifesto which is set to include vote-winning pledges on extending the Right to Buy scheme to housing associations, a move that would extend to 1.3 million tenants.

To fund the £4.5bn annual cost of the scheme, councils would be forced to sell their most expensive social homes as soon as they became vacant and replace homes on a one-for-one basis.

Last week the Local Government Association called on the next administration to give councils greater flexibility to set Right to Buy discounts, citing figures from a survey conducted with national housing chiefs which showed nearly three-quarters of councils felt they could only replace half or fewer of the homes sold through the current system – and 12% could not replace any at all.