The month in numbers: who wants the Right to Buy?

The Right to Buy was a popular policy when it was introduced by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, however the number of Right to Buy sales has fallen sharply since the early 2000s when New Labour placed a limit on the maximum discount tenants could receive. In 2008, when the financial crisis hit, the number of homes being sold fell to four figures for the first time.

An attempt to reinvigorate the Right to Buy under David Cameron by increasing the discounts led to a resurgence in sales, but this is nothing compared to the numbers seen in the 1980s and ’90s, even when looking at sales as a percentage of the remaining council stock.

As housing policy consultant Toby Lloyd explains, the make-up of people living in social housing today is different from how it was in the 1980s. Residualisation and the soaring price of property have meant that many are unlikely to be able to afford to buy their home, even with a hefty discount.

The sector explored this through the Voluntary Right to Buy pilot, which ran between 2018 and 2020 in the West Midlands. The 127-page report commissioned by the government following the pilot estimated that 1.3 million households in England would be eligible for a national Voluntary Right to Buy scheme, of which 246,166 (18%) would be able to afford it. However, just 15,870 households (1.2% of those eligible) would be expected to purchase under the scheme – a far cry from the nearly one million sales recorded in the 1980s.