New social homes to be exempt from Right to Buy for 35 years

On Tuesday night, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced an ambition to deliver at least 180,000 social rent homes through the upcoming and renamed Affordable Homes Programme.

The £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme is set to open for bids at the end of the calendar year. Through it, the government intends to deliver 300,000 social and affordable homes, 60% at social rent.

Alongside this, the government said it would publish its long-term plan: ‘Delivering a decade of renewal for social and affordable housing’. This will set out how it will deliver the “biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation” alongside improving the safety and quality of homes.

It includes five steps, one of which is reinvigorating council housebuilding.

The government launched a consultation on changes to the Right to Buy scheme last year, which allows tenants to buy their council homes at a discount. Launched in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher when she was prime minister, it has led to the loss of more than two million social homes. 

In his statement, Mr Pennycook said: “To better protect much-needed social housing stock, boost councils’ capacity, and enable them to once again build social homes at scale, we need to further reform Right to Buy. 

“Following the reduction in maximum Right to Buy cash discounts announced at autumn Budget 2024 and our decision to allow councils to keep 100% of Right to Buy receipts, we consulted late last year on reforms to deliver a fairer and more sustainable scheme.”

He said that, having analysed the feedback, the government decided on further reforms. These include:

• Increasing the length of time someone needs to have been a public sector tenant to qualify for the Right to Buy from three to 10 years

• Reforming discounts so they start at 5% of the property value, rising by 1% for every extra year an individual is a secure tenant, up to the maximum of 15% of the property value or the cash discount cap (whichever is lower) 

• Exempting newly built social homes from the Right to Buy for 35 years, ensuring councils are not losing homes before they have recovered the costs of building them.

Mr Pennycook said the government will legislate when parliamentary time “allows to bring these reforms into force”. 

He said: “More immediately, we will reform the receipts regime and extend existing flexibilities on spending Right to Buy receipts indefinitely.

“Councils will also continue to be able to retain the share of the receipts that was previously returned to HM Treasury. In addition, from 2026-27, we will permit councils to combine receipts with grant funding for affordable housing to accelerate council delivery of new homes.”

Mr Pennycook also announced the government was launching the Council Housebuilding Skills and Capacity Programme, backed by £12m of funding in 2025-26.

“The programme will enable the Local Government Association to provide centralised training and guidance to councils to upskill their existing workforces and to expand its successful Pathways to Planning programme to help recruit graduates ready to undertake training to become qualified surveyors and project managers,” he said.