Growing up in a council flat in the 1980s and 1990s, my mum would often point out homes that tenants had bought from the council. You could usually tell just from looking. A plain wooden door had been replaced with something fancier. New windows had appeared. Sometimes there was a porch or pillars outside the front door.Those houses were bought under the Right to Buy scheme - arguably the most consequential housing policy of my lifetime.
Supporters welcomed the chance for working-class families to own their own home and build wealth. Critics argue it hollowed out the country's stock of social housing and contributed to today's housing.
Really? Are you sure that’s the cause?
🎵 Where have all the houses gone, gone to invaders every one…🎵
But Andy Burnham doesn't like the policy. The Right to Buy scheme has seen various changes since its introduction in the 1980s, and Labour has weakened it significantly since coming to power in 2024. Then, in September, the prime minister told Labour's conference: "We will reform Right to Buy. Not taking the right away from anyone in an existing home, but removing it from new homes." This would help to keep council houses in public ownership "for generations to come", Burnham told delegates.
to allocate them to whom, Andeh?
Sir Keir Starmer's government restricted the scheme, including by heavily reducing the maximum discount that councils were allowed to give tenants.
Yes, Starmer was a moron too, we haven’t forgotten.
And now Burnham is removing the right to buy entirely from any new-build social home. The measures are included in a bill currently making its way through Parliament.
For those who became homeowners, Right to Buy turned a dream into reality. Barbara Stevens, now 80, bought her two-bedroom council flat in Kentish Town, north London, through Right to Buy for around £35,000. Now mortgage-free, she estimates it could be worth between £600,000 and £700,000.Her friend Trevor Abrahmsohn believes her story demonstrates the success of the scheme. "If you want to condemn the poor to poverty, make them lifetime renters," he says.
And lifelong Labour voters, too…
Even Housing Secretary Angela Rayner - part of the government that's restricting Right to Buy - bought and later sold her own council home for a profit.
Oh yes, we remember!
But to its detractors, Right to Buy is responsible for many of Britain's housing woes. Prof Tunstall says the policy is partly responsible for making social housing scarcer, which meant more people competed for homes in the private rented sector, pushing up rents.
And heaven forfend Prof Tunstall confronts the elephant in the room…
Lord Heseltine says it was originally assumed that councils would use sale proceeds to support new housing. He acknowledges that did not happen after he left government.
And no one in all the subsequent governments did anything about it.
Supporters of Right to Buy also argue that you can't appreciate the true value of the scheme by looking at numbers on a spreadsheet. The benefits of the policy extended for generations, they say, helping the children and grandchildren of those who bought homes.
To Labour, that’s not a plus, because it removes people from dependency on the State.
When I was a child and my mum rented from the council, she knew what she would be charged every month. She knew we wouldn't suddenly be forced to move. My siblings and I knew we wouldn't have to change schools. At that point, in the 1980s, one third of houses in England were council-owned. When my mum became pregnant with me, it was safe to assume that a home would soon become available - and within about a year, one did. She moved out of my nan's and into her new council flat. The children I now meet through my work often do not have that certainty. Today, the average wait for a family-sized home in London is 27 years. Some children are moved repeatedly between hotels and hostels. Councils across England now spend £8m every day housing families in temporary accommodation.
When you were growing up, your mum wasn’t in a queue behind half the Third World, was she?
9 comments:
Labour needs to keep people poor and blaming the rich for their woes. That's how they get their core vote
Jaded
The main disagreement with right to buy is the idea that people are making huge profits after buying houses low and then after a few decades being worth 100's of thousands.
But the home buyer is not buying to make a huge profit. They just want the security ownership provides.
The huge rise in house prices is due to government policy. Nothing the owner does influences the price in any major way.
So any change in right to buy is punishing tenants for government policy they have no control over. Is that fair?
As I understand it, the biggest mistake over the right to buy council houses, was that the money was not given back to the councils, so more council housing stock could be built. Instead, the money went to central government, and we all know how governments have a habit of employing people to shovel taxpayers money into bottomless holes. Irrespective of required accommodation for the increasing numbers of small boat invaders, foreign 'students' and their families overstaying their visas, and the rest of the world's refugees, there is a growing need for social housing for the indigenous population, all expected to be built by councils receiving ever decreasing government grants. However, no doubt all those civil (un)service lanyards working from home are dealing with this.
Penseivat
...and also bring back something like Grammar schools for they too provided way out of poverty. It's almost as if there were a plot to keep the rustic mechanicals in their place.
Didn't it occur to her to secure a home *before* getting pregnant? Y'know, like normal people do.
It wasn't quite that, it was that councils were compelled to spend the revenues on paying off existing mortgages, not on building new properties.
‘My mum rented a council house…’, ‘moved out of my Nan’s…’. If this, the identical case of Angela Rayner and that of Bridget Phillipson’s mother, not to mention a constant stream of mothers appearing in crime news stories (and an egregious instance from my own extended family) are anything to go by, a form of parthenogenesis has been rife among the ranks of council tenants ever since the 1977 Housing Act gave unmarried mothers the statutory right to council housing.
it was originally assumed that councils would use sale proceeds to support new housing
Why would anyone assume that. They don't invest the pension funds, they don't invest the road tax which collects lots of money they just piss it all up the wall like everything else.
Anyone dumb enough to believe any government is fiscally competent needs a rethink of their competencies.
Perhaps securing a husband for herself and present father for her spawn should have come before the council house?
Steven
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