Right to Buy Scam

Right to Buy was sold to the public as a patriotic crusade – Thatcher’s great vision of turning every council tenant into a proud homeowner, waving the keys to their own little castle. What she didn’t mention, of course, was that the castles were sold off at car‑boot prices, the drawbridge yanked up, and the moat filled with Treasury IOUs.

Here’s the con: councils lost the houses but didn’t get the money. For decades, between half and three‑quarters of every sale went straight to the Treasury – central government’s version of fishing down the back of the sofa and nicking all the loose change. Councils were left holding the deeds to nothing, staring at shrinking housing stock and a growing waiting list, while Number 11 quietly swept the proceeds into the national coffers.

And when the rules changed in 2012, the “freedom” to keep more of the cash came with so many conditions it made a Victorian workhouse contract look generous. Councils could keep the money if – and only if – they built new homes within three years. Oh, and that money could cover just 30 % of the cost of a replacement. Find the other 70 % yourself, or hand it back. It’s like being mugged, then offered your wallet back if you can refill it for the thief.

Meanwhile, the rents those sold homes would have generated – billions upon billions – vanished. Social housing wasn’t replenished; it was gutted. The lucky buyers flipped properties into buy‑to‑lets, raking in profit from the very tenants the policy was supposed to “liberate”. And councils? They got the blame for the housing crisis that Westminster engineered and banked.

This wasn’t about homeownership. It was an asset‑strip. A deliberate hollowing out of public wealth, dressed up as aspiration. The receipts didn’t build a better Britain – they built a giant black hole in social housing, one we’re all now paying for, just so a few ministers could boast they’d “spread opportunity”. What they really spread was poverty, and the smell still hangs in the air.