Why is abolishing the Right to Buy so far off the table in England?

The UK Government, having returned England to the pre-2012 (lower) discounts on the Right to Buy, is now consulting over further reforms including on minimum period before a tenant is eligible to purchase, whether new homes should be exempt permanently or for a finite period, among other possible changes.

This is in a context where the Government thinks there may only be 1700 sales in the coming year.

A recent Housing Today piece by Carl Brown  summarised the consultation and the immediate responses by housing trade bodies. Looking from north of the border there is a curious inability to deal effectively with the remnants of a policy well past its sell-by date.

But such is its political hold on housing policymakers that no-one seems able to make the crucial changes required. Would that other housing rights had the tenacity and unassailability of the Right to Buy (RTB). 

There is a curious inability to deal effectively with the remnants of a policy well past its sell-by date

Fifty years ago this month, Mrs Thatcher was elected to lead the Conservative Party and of course her imprint remains strong across British politics. Forty- five years after council house sales were legislated for, they also cast a long shadow.

Commentators in a recent discussion of Thatcher’s legacy in the Not Another One political podcast contrasted the political salience of the wealth transfer for sitting tenants and the political ramifications it had, as against the chronic failure to build replacement social housing and the growing resulting shortage of affordable housing. They might also have mentioned the poor value for money to the taxpayer, the fact that many of the children of those RTB purchasers have little chance of home ownership let alone social housing, or that a large proportion of those properties bought through the RTB are now in the private rented sector costing the housing benefit system far more than if they had stayed in social housing. The negative cumulative consequences far outweigh the future benefits of retention.

Why is abolishing this policy in 2025 so far off the table? Is it something to do with perceptions regarding aspirations to own, and is this more important than meeting affordable need in a housing emergency?

>>See also: New housing should be permanently exempt from Right to Buy, says CIH

This was not the view taken in Scotland where the Right to Buy was phased out in a two-stage process. First, in 2009, the RTB was abolished for new build council homes – no caveats, just a permanent removal.

This was simply seen to incentivise council to start building social housing again. It worked. Then, from July 2016, no new applications for council house purchase were allowed.

“A large proportion of those properties bought through the RTB are now in the private rented sector costing the housing benefit system far more than if they had stayed in social housing.”

 That was the end of the policy in Scotland. There was precious little political or public opposition – it was recognised that the era of the RTB was over and we moved on. And don’t respond by saying the RTB had less of a foothold in Scotland. In fact, a larger number of sales per capita took place in Scotland than in England (a fifth of English sales but less a tenth of the population). The Welsh can no doubt tell a similar story.

The other reflection for me on the RTB is that for decades we have seen tinkering, contortions, and increasingly elaborate policy amendments to deliver different aspects of the policy.

The other lesson from Scotland is to keep reform simple and transparent: you might even find this could be a rare example of relatively painless policy reform.

Professor Ken Gibb is director of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence at University of Glasgow