Thatcher's Right to Buy split my estate. Now its days could be numbered

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. It was introduced in 1980, three years before I was born, when Margaret Thatcher's government gave council tenants in England the legal right to purchase their homes at a discounted price.

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 crisis.

Some of my neighbours "made a killing" from the policy, in the words of my mum. One bought an almost identical flat to ours in 1989 for £21,200, after receiving a discount of £18,800. Eight years later it sold for £54,500. Five years after that it changed hands again for £143,000. (Notably, the person who made the most money from that flat wasn't the original council tenant - it was the people who bought it afterwards.)

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.

He has previously compared trying to solve the housing crisis while continuing to sell social homes to "trying to fill a bath with the plug out".

More than 40 years after its introduction, Right to Buy remains a debate about political values as much as housing policy, balancing the home ownership ideal against the desire to preserve social housing for future generations.

Since 1980, more than two million homes have been sold through the scheme in England.

In fact, about 40% of England's council housing stock has been sold through Right to Buy. Most of those sales took place in the early years, says Prof Rebecca Tunstall, a housing academic at the University of York and London School of Economics. At the time, Labour was vehemently opposed to Thatcher's plans. Yet many of its own voters went on to benefit from them.

Labour now argues that not enough of those two million homes were replaced. Sir Keir Starmer's government restricted the scheme, including by heavily reducing the maximum discount that councils were allowed to give tenants.

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. The government says that before Labour's various restrictions on the scheme, England was projected to see a net loss of 26,000 council homes over the next decade. Now there will be a net gain of 18,000 homes over the same period, it calculates.

This opens up a political divide: some opposition parties, like the Conservatives and Reform UK, say they would keep or even extend the scheme.

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.

Those arguments were central to Thatcher's vision of a "property-owning democracy".

Few people are more closely associated with Right to Buy than Lord Heseltine, who was the cabinet minister responsible for housing when it was introduced. When he and Thatcher launched the scheme in 1980, council tenants were offered substantial discounts to purchase their homes.

A relative of mine whose parents bought their council home in Croydon told me it was the only time "anyone would ever give you a hundred grand for free".

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.

In 1980, Lord Heseltine described the scheme as the biggest transfer of capital wealth from the state to ordinary people. "It certainly was," he says now, almost half a century on.

I ask him if, looking back, he would have designed the policy differently. "No," he answers.

He thinks Right to Buy gave its beneficiaries an important asset. "People who bought their own homes made a great deal of capital gain," he says.

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.

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.

That failure to replace sold homes sits at the heart of the modern criticism of Right to Buy.

For Molly Harris from the New Economics Foundation, it is "private landlords [who] are the real winners".

Her think tank's research found that 41% of homes sold through Right to Buy are now privately rented out. "Homes that were built with public money, and with the aim of providing an affordable and secure path to home ownership, have since been turned into assets," Harris says.

She says the shortage of social housing means more people need help with housing costs in the private rented sector, where rents are higher. So taxpayers are effectively paying twice: once to give a discount on the initial home; and then again, via housing benefit, when that home is rented out to someone who can't afford the payments. A former council home rented privately could now be valued at double, triple or quadruple what it cost when it was under local authority control.

I put that criticism to Lord Heseltine, asking him whether the scheme has failed because some ex-council homes are now effectively being rented back to the state, at higher costs.

He dismisses it as "rubbish", adding: "The scheme was wildly successful in spreading ownership across the country."

According to Harris's research, the government spent more than £58bn between 2021 and 2025 "subsidising private landlords" through the benefit system.

Newham Council says almost half of the 9,000 council homes sold under Right to Buy in Newham were later "flipped" into private rentals. The borough now has the biggest council house waiting list in the country. Last year, The Big Issue reported that Newham Council made a loss of more than £20m of taxpayers' money buying back homes it had sold just a few years earlier. The council said it was a quick way to provide new housing, and was a cheaper option than some alternatives.

And some council tenants say they are not interested in buying their homes. Ruth Crabb has lived in her flat in Havering since 1997. "I wouldn't buy my flat because I didn't want it to go out of circulation, as social housing is for those who come after me," she says. But, she adds: "I don't judge anyone who bought their property with Right to Buy."

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.

Research co-authored by Matteo Sandi, an economics professor at the University of Milan, looked at children growing up in areas where Right to Buy uptake was highest. He found better educational and economic outcomes, including higher GCSE attainment, greater chances of attending university, and increased earnings in adulthood.

"What we find is that there is, in fact, a lasting benefit from growing up in an owned property," he says.

He believes it's because ownership encouraged families to invest more heavily in their homes and neighbourhoods.

One of my relatives backs this up. He tells me his parents were able to move elsewhere in the country, enjoy a better standard of living and finally afford things that had previously been out of reach. He believes Right to Buy transformed their lives.