Introduction

This chapter draws on available statistics to indicate activity under the Right to Buy and its impact. More than 2.8 million council and social rented dwellings were sold in the UK under the Right to Buy between 1980 and 2015, generating more than £58 billion in capital receipts for government. The Right to Buy changed the size, nature and location of public and social rented housing across the UK, and contributed to a significant change in the overall tenure structure.

The government has provided statistics on council house sales since before 1980, but there are problems over changing definitions and practices. Some data are for financial and some for calendar years. Some refer to a narrow definition of sales carried out under the Right to Buy, and others to all sales to sitting tenants. Regional data for England ceased to be compiled after 2011. Local variations in rates of sale are difficult to present for local authorities that transferred any significant part of their stock. Consequently, this chapter does not provide a comprehensive or definitive statistical account, and aims to provide sufficient statistics to present a reliable picture that highlights key aspects of the Right to Buy.

Sales of public and social housing, 1980-2015

Table 4.1 presents data for the annual sales of dwellings in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by councils, new towns and housing associations. These data refer to Right to Buy Sales and its equivalent in Northern Ireland, and exclude other sales of existing social housing. They indicate almost 2.7 million sales in the UK between 1980 and 2015. It may be argued that some sales usually recorded as ‘other sales to sitting tenants’ should be added to these figures. These were highest in England and Wales in 1979 and 1980 and the years immediately following, with some 40,000 such sales in 1979 and a further 128,200 between the beginning of 1980 and end of 1986 (Forrest and Murie, 1988, pp 112-13). A further 31,783 other sales to sitting tenants are referred to between 1991 and 2014/15. If these figures are included, the total sales achieved under the Right to Buy in the UK between 1979 and 2015 were over 2.85 million.