The year 2015 marked 35 years since the introduction of the Right to Buy – a flagship policy of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government elected in 1979, and the most significant and lucrative act of privatisation associated with that or subsequent UK governments. The policy gave almost all tenants of public sector landlords the ‘right to buy’ their dwelling, and resulted in the sale of some 2 million dwellings in the UK between 1980 and 2015. In the same period, new additions to the stock of social rented housing fell far short of the volume of sales, and housing provided by local authorities and housing associations declined significantly.

The Right to Buy was always controversial, but media and other accounts focused on the successes – the stories of tenants who had bought their houses and the popularity of the policy. The government marketed the policy and periodically reinvented it to reassert its merits and to revive public interest. Reservations about the policy and its cumulative effects were more cautiously expressed, and for a long time arguments that the funds generated by selling houses should be reinvested in housing to ensure that future generations could obtain good quality, affordable housing were ignored.

There were no steps to reinvest capital receipts from council house sales in social housing before 1997 when concerns about value for money also began to inform policy modifications across the UK. Further changes followed to limit and then abolish the Right to Buy in Scotland and Wales, but in England, after 2010, the policy was revived and relaunched with increased incentives to buy, and also after 2012, with commitments to replace sold council houses on a one-for-one basis. Proposals and agreements in 2015 and 2016 further extended the Right to Buy and divergence in approach between different parts of the UK.

Throughout 35 years of the Right to Buy, and the debates leading up to it, there have been different views of its impact and unanticipated consequences. In 2016, however, we are in a position to consider longstanding anxieties about the Right to Buy, its long-term impact, and the effects of its extension in England.

The Right to Buy was introduced in 1980 following a period of sustained progress in addressing key housing problems in the UK.