Council tenants handed £75,000 right-to-buy discount on their home as Cameron revives Thatcher policy

Published 04th Apr 2012

Millions of council tenants will be helped to take up the right to buy their homes from today as David Cameron revives one of Margaret Thatcher’s most popular policies.

Discounts of up to £75,000 will be offered – four times the current deal on offer in London and treble the discount for residents in the rest of the country.

Home ownership for tenants of council and housing association properties has fallen in the past two decades as the discounts on offer fell and house prices surged.

Labour failed to embrace the policy during its 13 years in power and started to reduce the value of the deals.

But from this month, two million tenants will benefit from a bigger discount.

Mr Cameron will today say he wants to help families who ‘play by the rules’. He will say: ‘I want many more people to achieve the dream of home ownership. In the 1980s, Right to Buy helped millions of people living in council housing achieve their aspiration of owning their own home.

‘This vital rung on the property ladder was all but removed.

‘This Government is now putting it back by dramatically increasing the discount rates.’

Since 1980, two million social homes have been bought by tenants under the Right to Buy scheme. But numbers fell to just 3,690 sales last year.

The levels of discounts were drastically reduced by Labour in the 1990s. They fell from 50 per cent of a property’s value in 1998-99 to 24 per cent in 2008-09.

In London, the discount fell from 53 per cent to 10 per cent, making home ownership an unaffordable dream for many.

Critics of the Right to Buy scheme had criticised it for reducing the amount of social housing available to rent.

But ministers have pledged that the new Right to Buy scheme will see no reduction in the number of affordable homes. Any homes bought under the scheme will be replaced with new affordable homes for rent.

Source: ' ThisIsMoney '

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