The Social Housing Bill will finally slow Right to Buy. The government's own impact assessment shows it will also shrink the receipts that pay for replacement homes. Councils need to plan for both.
This week the Social Housing Bill is in Commons committee. According to the National Housing Federation, committee stage runs from 27 October to 3 November.
The Right to Buy reforms at its heart are overdue. I support them. But reform that protects homes on one side of the HRA can quietly weaken it on the other, and too few business plans have caught up.
A record year of losses
Start with what has just happened. MHCLG figures published on 6 August show 14,275 eligible Right to Buy sales in England in 2025-26. That is up 90% on the year before and the highest since 2006-07.
Councils received £1.61bn in receipts. Yet only 3,452 replacement homes were started or acquired, down 7%. By my calculation, that is fewer than one replacement for every four homes sold.
The cause is no mystery. Maximum discounts were cut from 21 November 2024. Applications jumped from 18,755 in 2023-24 to 63,378 in 2024-25, and MHCLG says some of last year's completions relate to applications made under the old, higher caps.
The rush is now showing up in the stock figures. The Regulator of Social Housing's annual statistics, published on 27 October, record a fall of 9,570 council homes at social rent. Housing associations added 7,829.
A note of caution, because accuracy matters. The regulator's local authority briefing says providers attribute around 64% of the general needs fall to recategorisation of stock that was wrongly reported in 2025. The underlying loss is real, but smaller than the headline.
What the Bill changes
The government's guide to the Bill sets out the core Right to Buy measures:
- The qualifying tenancy rises from three years to ten.
- Discounts start at 5% of value and rise to a maximum of 15%, or the cash cap if lower.
- New social and affordable homes are exempt for 35 years.
- The discount repayment period on resale extends from five to ten years, and councils keep a permanent right of first refusal.
- The Secretary of State can set rules on spending receipts through a determination.
The Bill also repeals the unimplemented high-value sales levy from the Housing and Planning Act 2016. The guide says that policy would have led to a net loss of social homes. Its formal removal takes a long-standing risk off every HRA business plan.
The number nobody is talking about
Here is the uncomfortable part. The Social Housing Bill impact assessment models what the Bill itself does, compared with today's post-November 2024 position.
Between 2027-28 and 2035-36 it estimates around 4,600 fewer sales. It also estimates around 4,850 fewer replacements. The net effect on stock is roughly 250 homes lower, and it turns negative from 2031-32.
Read that again. On the government's own modelling, the Bill on its own is broadly neutral for the number of homes, because fewer sales mean fewer receipts and fewer homes bought or built with them.
The assessment is careful to say its projections "should not be considered forecasts". The wider package, including the 2024 discount cut, looks far better: 67,300 fewer sales and 23,100 fewer replacements over ten years against the old baseline.
But the assessment does not put a figure on receipts lost to councils, on rental income retained, or on HRA impacts. That analysis has been left to us.
Why this matters for the HRA
Fewer sales are good news for the rent roll. Every home kept is income kept, and the stock condition investment in it is not handed over at a discount.
The problem is timing and dependency. Many councils have built receipts into their capital programmes as a recurring funding stream. The 2025-26 figures will flatter those assumptions, because they were driven by a one-off rush.
Acquisitions made up 55% of last year's replacements. Many of those purchases support temporary accommodation and homelessness strategies. As receipts fall, that route narrows, just as temporary accommodation costs keep rising.
The government has helped at the margins. It confirmed in April that councils can keep all receipts and combine them with grant. That is the right policy. It does not replace income that will no longer arrive.
What this means for councils
For Section 151 officers and HRA leads, I would suggest five practical steps before budget setting:
- Rebase receipts forecasts. Do not roll forward 2025-26. Model sales on the new eligibility rules and discount levels, with a downside case.
- Credit the rent you keep. Lower sales should improve rental income and the debt per unit position. Make sure the business plan shows it.
- Use the receipts you hold. Check retention deadlines and the spending rules, and prioritise schemes that can blend receipts with grant now.
- Find a successor to receipts-funded acquisitions. If your temporary accommodation strategy relies on buying homes with receipts, test other capital sources.
- Revisit your capital strategy. Reflect the loss of a funding stream in your borrowing plans and prudential indicators, not just the HRA.
On the fourth point, there are alternatives. At Westminster City Council I worked on a 42-year institutional funding structure that acquired 368 homes with £33.5m for retrofit, and a £50m, 40-year index-linked sale-and-leaseback of 124 temporary accommodation properties with the City of Westminster Pension Fund. Neither relied on Right to Buy receipts. Structures like these are not right for every council, but they show acquisition programmes need not stall when receipts dry up.
Protecting homes is only half the job
Right to Buy reform stops the leak. It does not refill the tank.
If ministers want the reforms to add homes rather than simply stop losing them, the receipts gap must be met with long-term capital. Until then, councils should plan on the basis that the money is going.
If you would like help rebasing your receipts forecast, stress-testing your HRA business plan or exploring alternative funding for acquisitions, please get in touch.
Sources
National Housing Federation: The Social Housing Bill; MHCLG: Right to Buy sales and replacements, England, April 2025 to March 2026; Regulator of Social Housing: annual social housing stocks and rents statistics; Regulator of Social Housing: local authority registered provider briefing note 2026; MHCLG: Guide to the Social Housing Bill; MHCLG: Social Housing Bill impact assessment; MHCLG: Right to Buy overhaul to safeguard social housing.