It's time to say 'bye' to Right to Buy

Why is England in a housing emergency? And why are there so few genuinely affordable housing options available? A chronic lack of social rent homes is at the centre of England’s housing emergency. Social housebuilding has fallen off a cliff. In 1980 we built 94,000 social homes, while last year we delivered just 9,500.

Right to Buy is the problem

But it's not just a lack of housebuilding – we've also lost a huge number of social homes due to Right to Buy. This scheme allows council tenants to purchase their social home from their local authority at a huge discount, up to 70%.

Since its introduction in 1980, over 2 million social homes have been sold via Right to Buy, with only 2% of these replaced. In the last ten years alone we've seen a net loss of 260,000 social rent homes with the main driver of this being Right to Buy [1].

This loss, coupled with the failure to build new social homes, has caused homelessness to double over the same period. Also, the private rented sector is twice the size it was 20 years ago. There are now almost 1.3 million households on the social housing waiting list and over 117,000 homeless households in temporary accommodation.

Freezing Right to Buy is the solution

To end the housing emergency, we must drastically increase the number of social rent homes in England. With rents pegged to local incomes, social rent homes are the only genuinely affordable type of home. That's why we're calling on the government to deliver 90,000 net new social rent homes each year for ten years. This will deliver the 900,000 safe, secure and genuinely affordable homes needed for every household homeless or on the social housing waiting list.

But to fill a bath, you can't just run the taps – you need to put the plug in too. The government must urgently stop Right to Buy from draining our social housing stock by immediately suspending the scheme until we've delivered this target. In June 2024, Shelter published new modelling by Arup which found that suspending Right to Buy could save 10,100 council-owned social homes each year [2].

Save public money and break down hurdles to building

Right to Buy has also proven terrible value for the public sector – for local authorities and the Treasury alike [3]. For the Treasury, fewer social homes means huge rises in homelessness and an increase in the housing benefit bill [4]. For the fifth quarter in a row (March 2023 to March 2024), government data on temporary accommodation has shown new record levels of homelessness, including 150,000 children without a home.

For cash-strapped councils, Right to Buy means higher temporary accommodation costs as they have limited options to house homeless families. In 2022/23 councils spent £1.7 billion on providing temporary accommodation. This has increased by 62% in the last five years.

Worse, because the discount is often so high, when a council sells a social home, the money earned doesn't cover the full cost of building a new social home [5]. And, government-imposed rules can effectively stop councils from using that money to replace the home like for like [6]. As one council stated in the Housing Forum paper 'Reforming the Right to Buy', it can take six social home sales from Right to Buy to fund building a new one [7].

The biggest problem with Right to Buy is that it makes it much, much harder to increase the supply of new social homes, as councils struggle even just to replace the homes lost. We need to put the plug back in the bath. Councils have told us there's no point investing time and money in building new social homes if their overall stock still decreases [8].

New research has shown that four in ten social homes sold under Right to Buy end up in the hands of private landlords [9]. So, homes that were genuinely affordable and secure by design have been transferred into an unregulated sector rife with insecurity and skyrocketing rents.

While Right to Buy did help some people financially, the policy has unfortunately locked hundreds of thousands of families out of a secure and genuinely affordable home. We need to call time on Right to Buy, but there is a way to help social tenants who want to buy a home without losing social homes. For example, our latest Brick by Brick report recommends a scheme to provide social tenants with cash to help them afford the deposit on a private home [10].

Social homes are forever

Make no mistake, a social home is and should be a life-long, respected housing option, including for the children of tenants through succession rights. For those who see it as a stepping stone to something else – it can be. But for the many who want to put down long-term roots within a thriving community, they can prosper from the stability and genuine affordability that a social home brings.

We must protect our social housing stock so that future generations have this option. The more we invest in current and new social housing, the closer we'll come to a society where everyone, regardless of their circumstances or income, can afford a decent, safe and secure place to call home.

Until we stop the leak and build a new generation of social rent homes, huge numbers of us will stay entrenched in insecure, unaffordable private rented homes while many families and households are forced into homelessness. We're in dire need of far more social homes.

We welcome the government's recent commitment to review Right to Buy. But the lack of social homes is an urgent problem for millions of people in England – that's why we're calling for its immediate suspension. It's already ended in Scotland and Wales. Help us say 'bye' to Right to Buy by adding your name to our petition today.

Footnotes

1. The net loss of social rent homes is calculated using DLUHC data comparing new builds, acquisitions and conversions (gains) and data on demolitions, sales and conversions (losses). DLUHC, Live tables on affordable housing supply, Table 1006C, DLUHC, Local authority housing statistics, Section K, RSH, Private registered provider social housing stock and rents in England 2022 to 2023, Stock Details and Table 3.13, DLUHC, Live tables on social housing sales, Table 684 and Table 678.

2. Venus Galarza et al. 2024. Brick by Brick: A Plan To Deliver the Social Homes We Need. Shelter.

3. Chartered Institute of Housing. 2022. UK Housing Review 2022 shows England's Right to Buy is a "strategic failure" and will exacerbate inequalities if left unchecked.

4. Richard Disney. 2015. The right to buy public housing in Britain: a welfare analysis. Institute for Fiscal Studies.

5. Alex Diner and Hollie Wright. 2024. Reforming Right to Buy. New Economics Foundation.

6. Simon Hill. 2022. The damaging legacy of right to buy. New Economics Foundation.

7. The Housing Forum. 2024. Reforming the Right to Buy.

8. The Housing Forum. 2024. Reforming the Right to Buy.

9. New Economics Foundation. 2024. More than 4 in 10 council homes sold under right to buy now owned by private landlords.

10. Venus Galarza et al. 2024. Brick by Brick: A Plan To Deliver the Social Homes We Need. Shelter.