A Trip Down Memory Lane

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Our source has provided this on the purchase of Council Houses:

Right to Buy

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The Right to Buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom which gives secure tenants of councils and some housing associations the legal right to buy, at a large discount, the home they are living in. There is also a Right to Acquire for assured tenants of housing association homes built with public subsidy after 1997, at a smaller discount. About 1.5 million homes in the UK have been sold in this manner since 1980. Critics claim that this compounded a housing shortage for those of low income, initiated a national house price bubble, and what is commonly recognised as the displacement and social cleansing of traditional communities.^[1] Supporters claim that the programme gave millions of households a tangible asset, secured their families finances and by releasing cash to repay Local Authority loans, and helped improve the public finances.^{[citation needed]}

Contents

 [hide] 

• 1 History
  • 1.1 Thatcher policies
• 2 Right to buy rules after 2005
• 3 Recent changes
• 4 Criticisms
• 5 See also
• 6 References
• 7 Further reading
• 8 External links

History[edit]

Council-type housing stock in Weaverham, now mostly owner-occupied

Individual local authorities have always had the ability to sell council houses to their tenants, but until the early 1970s such sales were extremely rare.

The Labour Party initially proposed the idea of the right of tenants to own the house they live in, in its manifesto for the 1959 General Election