The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, recently called for the Right to Buy to be suspended in connection with new build social housing at the same time as pledging to build around 10,000 new homes for social rent across at least 10 of the 11 boroughs comprising Greater Manchester.  

Keen to secure the status of these new builds as social housing, he stated, ‘In the face of a desperate housing crisis, the existence of Right to Buy means we are in effect trying to refill a bath without being allowed to put the plug back in’. In terms of numbers, Greater Manchester has seen the right to buy exercised on almost 24,000 homes over the past 20 years. 

Andy Burnham is not the first ‘Metro Mayor’ to have made such a call. On 22 June 2023 in a Mayoral Question Time Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan said that he wanted Whitehall to devolve the powers necessary to pause Right to Buy in London. 

The Right to Buy is well established in English law and so the Metro Mayors’ statements beg the question, how can suspension be achieved?  The most obvious precedent is to consider what occurred in Wales and Scotland, where the Right to Buy (for the time being at least) no longer exists.

The Scottish Parliament abolished the Right to Buy on 31 July 2016 under the Housing (Scotland) Act 2014 by the then Housing Minister (Kevin Stewart) citing efforts to build a sustainable housing policy for the future. This was well received by the housing sector because the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFCA) and the Association of Local Authority Chief Housing Officers (ALACHO) welcomed the end of the Right to Buy policy in Scotland stating that it’s ending came ‘not a moment too soon’.  

The Senedd abolished the Right to Buy by way of Statute under the Abolition of the Right to Buy and Associated Rights Act (Wales) 2018 which initially applied to a limited number of Welsh counties but with broader application to the whole of Wales dating from January 2019. Then Welsh Minister of Housing, Julie James, said that the move would give ‘social landlords more confidence to invest in building new social housing by removing the risk of these homes being sold after only a few years’. 

Wales and Scotland show that a life without the Right to Buy is possible and it is beyond doubt that its abolition has stopped the erosion of social housing stock in those countries. 

Against that backdrop, it is interesting that Burnham and Khan have stopped short of calling for outright abolition. This may be due to political expedience but their comments can be interpreted as shots across the bows of the Labour Party nationally, a party that advocates reform of the policy but not suspension. 

It seems as though a Labour government may decrease the discounts available although some in the party also advocate extending the length of requirement for those eligible to exercise the right which would effectively (for a period) limit the pool of ‘qualifying persons’. Others in the party advocate suspension or abolition. 

Earlier this year, the Local Government Association advocated material changes to the Right to Buy including increasing the tenancy requirements from three to 15 years and exempting new build or recently retrofitted properties from the right, the latter aligning with the position taken by the Metro Mayors. It seems that the chorus for reform is getting louder, but is Westminster listening?

If a Labour government is returned in the next general election, as predicted by many political pundits, it seems more likely (subject to electoral manifesto) that the Right to Buy will remain on the statute books for England. However, if the discounts available to qualifying tenants are materially decreased, appetite for exercising the right may be diminished by potentially reducing the numbers of rented stock being lost to the private housing market.   

A change to RTB discounts or to the qualifying persons definition would each not require major legislation and are both less radical than suspension or abolition. Will the current Labour leadership return to a position of suspension of the Right to Buy as advocated by former Shadow Housing Minister Theresa Pearce at the party conference in 2016 and recently echoed by two metro Mayors? It seems unlikely but we shall soon find out and in the meantime, local authorities and registered providers will be watching developments with a keen and vested interest.