The purchases will generate £173m in receipts, which councils use to build new homes.
One in which councils must define their role by action, not by right.
Housing, which councils and Whitehall fight over, should work better if it is managed by one body.
The outgoing coalition government has distributed a total of £470m for the reforms in the new financial year, which councils fear is not enough.
It's notclear what the next step would be and how it would fit in with the processes by which councils are accountable to citizens.
A Citizens UK resource (pdf) cites several examples of innovative ways in which councils are persuading private landlords to rent to refugees.
But allotments are allowed to have an allotment shop, which councils tend to regard as fund-raising rather than a business.
A world in which councils were focused on building strong resilient communities rather than just on picking up the pieces when things go wrong.
The money to which councils had access for social care was rising significantly, by up to £3.5bn by 2020, the spokesperson said.
That is the real world in which councils now operate: trying to maintain a semblance of service provision in a deepening financial crisis.
My colleagues on the Datablog have put together this map that shows which councils are voting and who controls them now.
