Without ending Right to Buy, there can be no resolution to the housing crisis

The Labour Campaign for Council Housing has produced a statement calling on Labour to commit to ending Right to Buy. We are asking party members at every level, along with trades unions and tenants’ organisations, to sign the statement.

The overwhelming view of the members was shown in the resolutions passed at the 2019 and 2021 conferences, which included ending Right to Buy. It was also incorporated into the 2019 election manifesto. At the 2021 conference, Lucy Powell declared that it was the right thing to do and that it was what the members wanted. In her speech to the most recent Labour conference, Lisa Nandy said: “The idea of a home for life, handed on in common ownership to future generations, is an idea worth fighting for.”

We agree. But Right to Buy ends this common ownership and turns council homes into private assets, 40% of which end up in the private rented sector where there are much higher rents. In a conference fringe meeting, Nandy said the policy was under review. It is therefore important that a strong message is given to the leadership that the membership want a commitment to end Right to Buy.

In Scotland and Wales, the loss of housing stock has been halted by ending the scheme. In England, where it remains in place, stock numbers decrease every year. After a fall in sales in 2020/21 to less than 7,000 (probably as a result of the pandemic), 2021/22 saw a return to the trend of more than 10,000 sales. Since 2012/13, 107,472 homes have been sold. According to the statistics sent in by councils each year to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, between 2012 – when the coalition government increased the Right-to-Buy discount – and March 2021, there were 27,508 new builds and councils bought 15,172 properties (many ex-council properties). Add to the equation 26,408 demolitions, and we find a fall in council housing stock of 104,693.

With less than 1.6 million council homes left in England, the acute shortage of homes available coupled with extortionate house prices force people into the expensive and often poor quality private rented sector. Despite many councils changing the criteria for being on housing waiting lists (finessing the figures downwards), there are more than 1.1 million households on waiting lists. However, last year there were less than 80,000 new tenancies issued by councils. When you take account of demolitions in addition to Right-to-Buy sales, councils have to build around 12,000 homes a year just to replace lost stock. That level of building has not been met since 1990.

Ending Right to Buy is cost free, and in stopping the loss of homes, it would mean that all new council building would increase the stock and open up the prospect of beginning to cut the number of households on housing waiting lists

From talking to senior party figures, the hesitation of the leadership over this question appears to be that they are concerned that the Tories will condemn them for “being opposed to aspiration”. This is an argument which is not difficult to deal with. Before Right to Buy was introduced, council housing facilitated home ownership insofar as the reasonable rents enabled tenants to save up a deposit, buy a home on the market and hand back the keys to the council to house somebody else from the waiting list.

Given the acute shortage of council homes and the fact that you have to be disadvantaged and poor to be given a tenancy, very few tenants can afford a mortgage even with the sizeable discounts available. There’s no great swathe of votes to be won.

The stigma towards council housing and tenants was created as a result of the promotion of home ownership as a tenure superior to renting. Yet people who cannot afford or do not want a mortgage do not lack “aspiration”. They have different aspirations. During the pandemic, millions of people began to reassess what was important in life for them. Personal acquisitions do not ensure contentment. Far from providing security, a mortgage can produce insecurity and stress as millions of people are beginning to find out as interest rates increase beyond 6%.

Council housing with a secure tenancy can rescue a new generation from the private rented sector. Ending Right to Buy, combined with a large-scale council house building programme (for which the 2019 and 2021 Labour conferences voted), would result in hundreds of thousands of people being given new tenancies and ending their enforced presence in the private rental market. This would make it less of a sellers’ market and likely bring down prices in the private rented sector and for market sales.

Ending Right to Buy is a precondition for increasing council housing stock without which there can be no resolution to the housing crisis. Help us to get this message across by signing the statement yourself or getting your party branch/Constituency Labour Party, Labour Group, union branch or tenants’ organisation to support it.