A total of 14,275 council homes were sold under the Right to Buy scheme in England during 2025-26, a 90 per cent increase on the previous year, according to figures reported by local authorities.
The Right to Buy scheme allows most council tenants to buy their council home at a discount to its market value.
The surge in sales follows a decision by the Labour government to lower the discount available to buyers. Tenants who applied to buy their home before November 21, 2024 could get a discount of up to £136,400 if their home was in a London borough, or £102,400 if it was outside London.
Discounts can theoretically still reach 70 per cent of a property's value, but that is now unlikely because the maximum caps have been reduced and vary from region to region. In the South East, council tenants can now get a maximum discount of £38,000. That falls to £16,000 in some areas, including West Berkshire and the boroughs of Tonbridge and Malling and Epsom and Ewell.
The November 2024 deadline triggered a rush of applications from council tenants. Because the home buying process takes time, many of those who applied before the deadline only completed their purchases during 2025-26, meaning they were counted in that year's figures.
Local authorities received £1.61 billion from eligible Right to Buy sales in the 2025-26 tax year, up 99.6 per cent on the previous year. The average receipt per home was £112,900, a rise of 5 per cent compared with 2024-25. Since the scheme began in 1980, more than two million council homes have been sold to tenants.
Are the homes being replaced?
The scheme continues to help tenants onto the property ladder, but it also adds pressure to an already short supply of social housing. Around 1.3 million households are on local authority housing waiting lists, according to a study by the Resolution Foundation, the highest number since 2014. There is also a near-record number of households living in temporary accommodation.
Just 3,452 replacement homes were funded through Right to Buy receipts in 2025-26, well short of the 14,275 homes sold and a 7 per cent fall compared with the previous year.
Nouran Moustafa, an independent financial adviser at Roxton Wealth, said she was concerned about whether homes were being replaced fast enough. "Right to Buy has been brilliant at creating individual homeowners, but terrible at replacing the social homes it removes," she said.
"Every home sold without an effective replacement shrinks the safety net for the next family and pushes more households towards an already expensive private rental market," Moustafa said.
Reform plans under the Social Housing Bill
Andy Burnham has said he will oversee the "biggest council house building programme" since the period after the Second World War. Rachel Springall, a finance expert at Moneyfacts, said tackling the provision of social housing was part of the first official speech from the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham. "While this comment is positive, the scale and pace to achieve significant numbers of new dwellings has to be bold to cater to high demand," Springall said.
Reforms to overhaul the Right to Buy scheme are currently proposed under the Social Housing Bill, which is going through Parliament. Potential buyers currently need just three years as a public sector tenant to qualify, but this is planned to rise to ten years under the new reforms. Newly built social homes would be protected from the scheme for 35 years, and "hard-to-replace" rural homes would be excluded. There could also be further adjustments to discounts against market value.
Springall said the proposed changes could cause a rush of tenants trying to buy their home in the months ahead, so seeking advice would be wise. "A third reading of the bill is expected in September, so there is still time for tenants to start the process of buying their home if they are eligible under the Right to Buy rules," she said.
