First part of the UK finally scraps Right To Buy

Right To Buy - the controversial sell-off of council and housing association homes initially introduced as a flagship of Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s - has been scrapped in Scotland.

It continues in the rest of the UK.

To date some 494,580 council and housing association homes were sold north of the border - the final applicants wishing to buy their homes had to submit their applications by midnight yesterday. 

“Since Right to Buy was introduced in 1980, nearly half a million council and housing association homes have been sold to their tenants [in Scotland]” says the country’s housing minister Kevin Stewart. 

"By ending the right to buy we are protecting up to 15,500 social homes from sale over the next 10 years and safeguarding this stock for future generations" he says.

Mary Taylor, chief executive of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, says the move “hasn’t come a moment too soon” and comments that “although particular individuals have benefited from Right To Buy, the sales have been at a loss to the greater public good.”

The Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers has also welcomed the move. 

"Ending the right to buy will allow social landlords to plan longer term, manage assets and income more effectively and most importantly to invest to increase the number of social rented homes for the first time since 1981. That means more long term jobs and apprenticeships to maintain our homes and more households taken out of housing need and living in warm, dry and genuinely affordable housing" says the association’s policy manager Tony Cain.